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HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




Drawn by Corporal Rods, Battery D 
"Rocket Guards Had to Stand Their Ground and Take Whatever Came" 

(See page 243) 



LorfVW, V- 



L^dLdkolxrcfiXXv^ 



History of the 
305th Field Artillery 




THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 

Garden City New York 



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COPTRIGHT, 1919, BT 

CHARLES WADSWORTH CAMP 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



f^Oi/ 15 19)9 



(e)CI.A53 65G7 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

THOSE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE 305th F. A. 

WHO REST IN FRANCE 



PREFACE 

When the Colonel assigned to me the task of writing a 
history of the regiment we were billeted at Arc-en-Bar- 
rois in the Haute Marne. Most of the work, therefore, 
was done at Arc and Malicorne, or, practically, under 
field conditions. One must admire all the more, then, the 
success of the artists, which overcame a lack of proper 
tools and working space. To Corporal Roos, Private 
Enroth, Corporal Schmidt, Musician Boyle, Corporal 
Tucker, Captain Dana, Captain Starbuck, and Private 
Everts the regiment is indebted for the majority of these 
lively souvenirs of campaigns and billets. 

Tremearne of B and Downs of A were particularly 
useful in gathering statistics and material. Where statis- 
tics lack, or are not complete, it must be assumed that 
names and figures were either not furnished or could not 
be obtained. 

The historian has thought it of interest to follow his 
own narrative with an appendix containing contributions 
by individual officers and men. 

The whole, he ventures to hope, will constitute a pleas- 
ant record — ^necessarily imperfect, because of its brevity — 
of a very memorable experience. 

Chables Wadsworth Camp. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Regiment Is Born 3 

II. It Has Growing Pajns 13 

III. And Becomes Acquainted With Paper 

Work 26 

IV. On the Range 37 

V. Holidays and Rumors 47 

VI. The Ages of Getting Ready . . . 5Q 

VII. Good-byes and the Submarine Zone . . 71 

VIII. Brest, Pontanezin, and the Chemin de 

Fer 85 

IX. SouGE AND First Casualties ... 94 

X. Hustled to the Front 104 

XI. Making the Hun Dance 120 

XII. Consolidating in Lorraine .... 135 

XIII. Barrages and Raids 147 

XIV. The Fires Beyond Chateau-Thierry 165 
XV. Across the Marne to Nesles Woods . 174 

XVI. Reconnoitering in Front of Fismes . 199 

XVII. Les Pres Farm and Much Shell Fire . 210 

XVIII. The Cost of Battle 223 

XIX. Spies and the Advance 240 

XX. The Argonne 259 

XXI. Always Through the Forest . . . 272 

XXII. The Last Phase 280 



APPENDIX 

I. Roll of Honor 293 

n. Athletics 297 

III. Where Wing Was Hurt 302 

IV. The Response 303 

V. A Trip to Germany 304 

VI. Observation 306 

VII. A Memorable Forty-eight Hours. . . . 325 

Vni. The Accompanying Gun 329 

IX. Gassed Cave at La Petites Logette Near 

Blanzy 335 

X. The Dud 338 

XI. The Dud Again 339 

XII. Praise and Advice 343 

XTTT. Doing Scout Duty for the Artillery . . . 346 

XIV. Rustling Supplies 349 

XV. A Good Dinner Shot to H .... 353 

XVI. The First and Last Shots 355 

XVn. Changes of Station of Regimental P. C. . . 357 

XVin. Roster of the Officers 359 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Halftone Illustrations 

"Rocket guards had to stand their groimd and take what- 
ever came" Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Early and imperfect days on the range at Souge . . . 102 

"The battle roar would die before a threatening silence" 104 

A train bivouaced 170 

" Fourgons lurched dangerously " 186 

" We curved up the hill past the half destroyed Roman- 
esque church" 202 

Colonel, afterwards Brigadier General, Manus McCloskey, 

the Brigade Commander 208 

A neighbor at work in gas masks 214 

"O. K.--0. K." 216 

A kitchen near a battery position 222 

Barbed wire 232 

A tank 232 

" The artillery would follow in support " 244 

Resting on the march 260 

A well shelled road 262 

Off duty for a moment 262 

A portion of the regiment concealedin the Argonne . . 266 

The officers of the regiment at Arc-en-Barrois .... 286 

Malicome from the Sarthe 288 

305th Field Artillery, 77th Division . 290 

Text Illustrations 

PAGE 

Upton — France 3 

Headquarters Hill, Camp Upton 11 

zi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE) 

When the recruits began to arrive at Camp Upton . . 17 
How you felt the first time the medical oflBcer used your 

arm for a pin cushion 23 

Reflections on liberty were alike at Upton and in France 29 

A quiet game in a mess hall at Upton 37 

The first time you found a cootie 49 

This map illustrates the travels of the regiment from its 

landing at Brest to its final billets at Malicorne . . 74 

The coolies hard at work at Camp de Souge .... 92 

" The horses never got to like the 'hommes' and 'chevaux' " 111 

" A group of gaunt walls suggested a devastating fire " . 115 

The picket line 117 

" Something dead and corrupt " 121 

The water cart 125 

An observatory 133 

The regiment's home in Lorraine 136 

The rolling kitchen 144 

The mess line 153 

A three-cornered fight 160 

On the march 179 

" The shelter of broken waUs " 191 

The Vesle and Aisne campaigns 201 

Mess-hour at the Fismes front 215 

A Battery D piece at Chery 224 

Carrying in ammunition 227 

" The telephone details were at it day and night " . . 234 

The jumping-off place 264 

The vicinity of La Harazee 269 

Lan^on and Grand Ham 273 

Grand-Pre 275 

The dug-out near which Lieutenant Hoadley was killed . 277 

Forcing forward 278 

Binarville and its surroundings 282 

Refugees flowing out, the artillery going in 284 

The church at Arc-en-Barrois 286 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 



History of the 305th Field Artillery 



THE REGIMENT IS BORN 



When it comes to beginnings, regiments are not unlike 
humans. They aren't pretty objects, or self-sufficient. 
They gaze upon the world with inquiring eyes. They 
address it with lusty and surprised lungs. 

We were very much like that, and our first surprises 
came with our first days, when the men commissioned from 
the second battery at the first Plattsburg Reserve Officers* 
Training Camp reported at Camp Upton. 

The adjutant's office was in an unpainted wooden bar- 
racks. A fine stretched hour after hom-, snake-like, half 
around it, its head investigating the somber corridor where 
the adjutant's assistant sat making assignments. Nearby, 
those who had survived the ordeal stood in groups, ill-at- 
ease, wondering. 

" What is a casual officer? Some- 
thing to do with casualties .f*" 

"They told me at Plattsburg," 
you might hear another say, "I was 
in the regimental quota. That fel- 
low in there says no. I'm in a thing 






Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D 



4 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

called Military Police, and when I told him I'd never swung 
a billy in my life he wanted to know what that had to 
do with it." 

"I'm in the Depot Brigate," a third grinned sheepishly. 
"Good God! Do we have to run the trains?" 

A captain walked from the corridor and came up with a 
pleased smile. 

"What did they hand you?" someone asked. 

In his voice was pride, and a vague, new responsibility. 

"I'm assigned to the 305th Field Artillery, National 
Army." 

Several joined as in a chorus: 

"So are we. That's going to be the number of our regi- 
ment." 

And the surprise and gloom deepened on the faces of 
those shifted thus unexpectedly to unforeseen branches 
of the service. 

After that fashion the regiment was born and baptized, 
and we heard for the first time the significant number in 
which oflficers and men have, to an extent, merged their 
thoughts, their actions, and their individuaHties. 

Colonel Fred Charles Doyle was the first to report. 
He came from the regular army, and received his assign- 
ment from Major-General Bell on August 28th, 1917. For 
ten days afterward the officers poured in and commenced 
to prepare for the men who would arrive in the course of 
the next few weeks. 

Without the men, during those days of its beginnings, it 
wasn't, to be sure, much of a regiment, yet it possessed 
from the start ambition, pride of organization, and al- 
ready — a noticeable factor — an instinct that ours was to 
be bigger, better, and more terrible to the enemy than any 
other regiment of Field Artillery. 

Yet we went gropingly at first, asking earnest but ab- 
surd questions about equipment and rations, or demanding 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 5 

with concern where we could house even a single section. 
For the welcome Camp Upton gave us was not of arms 
outstretched and smiling hospitality. We had stepped 
from New York through a screen of dreary pine wilderness 
to an habitation, startling and impossible. A division 
was to be trained here to fight the Hun, but to any ob- 
serving person it appeared that if the war should last an- 
other decade Camp Upton could not become useful. It 
wore an air of having just been begun and of never wishing 
to be finished. A few white pine barracks stretched 
gaunt frames from the mud against a mournful sky. To- 
wards the railroad two huge tents had an appearance of 
captive balloons, half-inflated. For the rest there were 
heaps of lumber of odd shapes and sizes, and countless 
acres of mud, blackened by recent fires — half -cleared land 
across which was scattered a multitude of grotesque and 
tattered figures. These workmen went about their tasks 
with slow, indifferent gestures, their attitudes suggestive 
of a supreme faith in the eternity of their jobs. 

Some of us gathered on Division Hill the night of our 
arrival. We gazed from the little that was done to the 
immensity that remained untouched. 

"Where are they going to put the 305th? " 

Captain Devereux had gathered some information. He 
pointed to the northwest. 

"That's the area assigned to the regiment. We'll live 
and train there." 

For a long time, with skeptical eyes, we continued to 
stare at that blackened desert. We strolled back to J22, 
our temporary quarters, depressed and doubtful. In the 
barn-like upper floor, where we had erected cots, we gath- 
ered about a candle lantern, and in low tones probed the 
doubtful future. Colonel Doyle, who was to be the regi- 
ment's commander from its birth to its final demobiliza- 
tion, was to us that night no more than a name. He 



6 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

lived somewhere on Long Island and would be in camp 
the next day. At least we had a colonel, but who would 
be our lieutenant colonel? We had one major, made at 
Plattsburg. What about the other we needed? 

Lieutenant Derby pronounced the first of the regi- 
ment's innumerable rumors. It should be said, too, that 
it's about the only one that ever came true. He had heard 
in town that Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War 
would come to us as lieutenant colonel. 

We gossiped about the unexpected shifting about of 
our friends. Many that we had expected to have with us 
had been quietly spirited away. Others, whom we had 
not hoped to see after Plattsburg, sat in our circle, assigned 
to the regiment. We had, at the start, found the army 
full of odd surprises. It gave us all, for the moment, a 
sense of instability. Our commissioned tables of organ- 
ization, filled out painstakingly the last night at Platts- 
burg, would have radically to be revised. Nor was that 
the only unexpected task. We couldn't forget the black 
waste, seen from Division Hill. Before many days the 
men of the first draft would stream in. We would have to 
share in the miracles that would feed, clothe, and house 
them; that would give them that vital initial impression 
they were going to be taken care of in the army. Our 
doubts increased when we sought our own washing facili- 
ties that first night. Who will forget the scouting among 
piles of lumber, the stumbling over roots and stumps, the 
escapes from superbly imitated swamps, or the final, 
triumphant discovery of a single pipe and faucet, sur- 
rounded by a mob of violent temper? For more than a 
thousand oflScers had reported at that time, and of the 
twenty -five thousand workmen of the Thompson-Starret 
Company, some undoubtedly craved that which is next 
to Godliness. Even then there may have been other pipes 
at Upton, but for a time that one remained our only dis- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 7 

CO very; and it had a miserable habit of falhng languidly 
over into the mud unless it was supported by a comrade 
who had the strength and the will to fight off an army. 

Yet we shaved. Yet we contrived to look clean. 

"Horrors of war. No. 1," we labelled our pipe. 

So we struggled on, preparing ourselves as best we could 
for the day when the first enlisted men would arrive. We 
gazed at night with new interest at the multitude of fires 
that blazed, crimson, against the forest, surrounded by 
ragged groups of workmen, who sat for the most part in a 
sullen and unnatural quiet. For the miracles happened 
under our eyes. Day by day the wilderness receded, the 
mushroom city spread. This morning you might walk in 
a thicket. To-morrow you would find it cleared land, 
untidy with the beginnings of buildings. A faith grew that 
the 305th would have a home. 

Side by side with these, other and more intimate mir- 
acles developed. Colonel Doyle established a regimental 
headquarters on a mess table in the mess hall of Jl. What- 
ever stateliness it may have acquired later, headquarters 
went in those days, as one might say, on hands and knees. 
Colonel Doyle explained how things should be done, and 
we did our best to do them right. Already from the pots 
and pans of Jl Paper Work raised an evil head and sneered 
at us. 

Before we'd got the table really untidy with baskets 
and typewriters and files and reports, other organizations 
came enviously in, and established headquarters on that 
table too. There was a machine gun battalion, the am- 
munition train, and maybe a bakery company or so. 
Things became rather too confused for an accurate count. 
We stole quietly to J20, to the upper floor of which we had 
already moved our sleeping quarters. 

That same afternoon Major Wanvig appeared, bearing 
under each arm an oblong board sign. One he nailed at 



8 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

the entrance of the building. The other he fastened to a 
post by the road, so that no one passing could deny the 
presence he approached. 

Each of these signs bore on a white background in strik- 
ing black strokes : 

"Headquarters, 305th F. A. N. A." 

We stood about staring. 

"That's us — the 305th Field Artillery. Are we going to 
make it big and successful enough?" 

There were at least no visible shirkers, and we had ac- 
quired already a belligerent disposition to stand fast for 
the rights of the regiment. That was as it should have 
been, since we were destined to be among the first of the 
combat organizations. There was, moreover, need of 
such a spirit. 

Take J20, for example. Once you had got a bit of floor 
space there the whole world conspired to tear it from you, 
or, as more convenient, you from it. Regimental Head- 
quarters had established itself modestly in a corner of the 
lower dormitory. Officers of high rank sought sleeping 
space, complaining that we were in their way. Brigade 
Headquarters sent messengers to measure us broad and 
long. Commanding officers and adjutants of various 
organizations, quartered in the same building cast in our 
direction threatening glances. Low-browed hirelings of 
the Thompson-Starret Company came, demanding the 
return of panels of Upson board and pieces of deformed 
lumber with which we had endeavored to barricade our- 
selves against an eager and conscienceless world. In 
spite of everything Regimental Headquarters clung to 
its corner until, in late October, it moved to its own build- 
ing in the 305th area. Those few weeks in J20, moreover, 
witnessed our adolescence. When we tramped across the 
hill we were, indeed, a regiment. 

September 6 was a day that must be recorded notice- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 9 

ably. It saw the first enhsted personnel of the 305th. 
His name was Frank Dunbaugh. He stood at attention 
before Colonel Doyle, saluting. 

"Private Dunbaugh reports as directed." 

And behold we were a regiment — officers and man ! 

We all, I think, felt a call to take out that pleasant 
young fellow and give him dismounted drill, simulated 
standing gun drill, physical exercise, semaphore, wig-wag, 
and buzzer; the beginnings of firing data, and scouting; 
with, perhaps, in his off moments, a little of grooming and 
horse-shoeing, and the theory, at least, of equitation. 

But he was a little man, and Division Headquarters tore 
him from us before we could really annoy him. An order 
came down: 

"Private Frank Dunbaugh is relieved from duty with 
the 305th F. A. N. A., and is attached to Division Head- 
quarters," and so forth. 

Paper Work grinned. 

For that matter he had plenty to chuckle over aheady. 
Headquarters was aware by now of his portly and increas- 
ing figure. General Orders, Special Orders, Memoranda, 
and Bulletins were suspended in neat wads from the wall. 
Captain Gammell, the regimental adjutant, threaded his 
way among them with haughty ease. At his suggestion, 
indeed, an officer brought from Division Headquarters a 
bundle the size of a small bale of cotton. We gathered 
around it, admiring the countless neat forms it contained, 
all labelled "A. G. O., No. so and so." 

"What a system!" everybody gasped. 

What a system, indeed! But we couldn't dream of all 
those delicate forms portended. Captain Gammell dis- 
tributed them. Colonel Doyle explained how simple it 
was to handle them, and we turned again to the apparently 
more serious business of getting ready. 

Shorn of their sole enlisted personnel the officers with 



10 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

grim determination pounced upon each other. There was 
no reasonable drill ground, but we took ourselves to the 
stumps and the logs of half cleared spaces. We drilled 
each other. We shouted at each other. We abused each 
other. How, we asked, would new officers and men take 
this or that .5^ 

"If you make a rookie laugh it's all off," an officer said 
after an exceptionally piercing cry of command. 

"Or," another put in dryly, "If you give him the im- 
pression you're going to murder him he won't respond 
cheerfully enough." 

We endeavored, therefore, not to resemble fools or 
assassins. Sometimes it was difficult. 

Each day now, for a time. Colonel Doyle rescued us from 
our harsh treatment of each other. He took us to the 
slope of Division Hill where we sat on charred logs and 
listened to him discourse at length on various methods of 
computing firing data, or interpret the Articles of War 
and Army Regulations, drawing on his long experience in 
the Regular Army. 

The activity about us was frequently distracting, unreal, 
a trifle prophetic. In the rapping of countless hammers 
you could fancy the stutter of machine guns. The fall 
of heavy timbers was suggestive of the crash of rifles of 
our own calibre. At the base of the hill, to give a more 
realistic touch of war, lay the encampment of the colored 
troops of the 15th New York National Guard. 

It should be recalled in passing that these dusky dough- 
boys were a very small oasis of soldiers in a thirsty desert 
of officers. In salutes and courtesies they received a 
maximum of practice. 

Lieutenant Colonel Stimson came to us during one of 
these classes. That was on September 6, and by evening 
of the next day the last of the officers sent down from the 
First Plattsburg Training Camp had reported and been 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 11 

assigned or attached to the 305th. Since the majority of 
them led the regiment into its first battles a record should 
be made of their names in this chapter of beginnings. We 
commenced then with the following officers, most of whom 
had abandoned civil life only three months earlier: 

Colonel Fred Charles Doyle, commanding the regiment; 
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson, temporarily assigned to the 
command of the First Battalion; Major Harry F. Wanvig> 
commanding the Second Battalion; Captain Arthur A, 
Gammell, regimental adjutant; 2nd Lt. Allen A. Klots, 
acting adjutant. First Battalion; Captain Douglas Delanoy, 
adjutant Second Battalion; Captain M. G. B. Whelpley, 
commanding the Headquarters Company; 1st Lt. Edward 
Payne, temporarily in command of the Supply Com- 
pany; Captain Alvin Devereux, commanding Battery A; 
Captain Gaillard F. Ravenel, commanding Battery B; 
Captain Noel B. Fox, commanding Battery C; Captain 
Frederick L. Starbuck, commanding Battery D; Captain 
Robert T. P. Storer, commanding Battery E; Captain 
Cornelius Von E. Mitchell, commanding Battery F; First 
Lieutenants Sigourney B. Olney, George P. Montgomery, 
William M. Kane, Harvey Pike, Jr., W^atson Washburn, 
James L. Derby, Edgar W. Savage, Frank Walters, and 
Drew McKenna; Second Lieutenants Sheldon E. Hoad- 
ley, Thornton C. Thayer, Norman Thirkield, George B. 




Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D 
Headquarters Hill, Camp Upton 



12 HISTORY OF 305t}i FIELD ARTILLERY 

Brooks, Lydig Hoyt, Thomas M. Brassel, Lee D. Brown, 
Chester Burden, Charles W. Camp, Paul Jones, Oliver 
A. Church, Roby P. Littlefield, William H. M. Fenn, John 
R. Mitchell, Warren W. Nissley, Harold S. WiUis, Frede- 
rick L. Beck, Danforth Montague, Melvin E. Sawin, 
George P. Schutt, Lloyd Stryker, Lawrence Washington, 
John A. Thayer, Karrick M. Castle, Harry G. Hotchkiss, 
George E. Ogilvie, Wilham L. Wilcox, Lewis E. Bomeisler, 
Jr., Darley Randall, and Edward W. Sage. 

Almost at once changes were made in this list of our 
charter members, as one might call them. Officers were 
assigned away from us, while strangers were brought into 
our midst. Thirty-five of the charter members accom- 
panied the regiment to France. After the armistice there 
remained only nineteen. 

The eternal changes of the army system were largely 
responsible for these losses, as they accounted also later 
for the passing of many enlisted men, but whenever we 
meet the old friends we think of them as belonging pecul- 
iarly to the S05th. Some we can't see again, because the 
Vesle, the Aisne, or the Argonne holds them forever away. 

But it is a dreary business to anticipate. They were 
very much with us and very much loved at Upton. 

So the first week ended, and we were, speaking sketch- 
ily, on our feet, if still unsteady. 



II 

IT HAS GROWING PAINS 

Going into the second week the colonel talked daily 
with his organization commanders. Such conferences 
revolved largely about the almost scented forms from the 
Adjutant General's Office. These, it developed, would, 
when the men arrived, have to be decorated with count- 
less, neat statistics. Soldiers, as far as we knew, might go 
hungry or without equipment, but, as far as figures went, 
they would unquestionably be cared for tenderly. No 
one would have the slightest doubt as to their most in- 
timate family history, the number of years it had taken 
them to dribble through public or private institutions of 
learning, or their degree of proficiency on mandolin, har- 
monica, or Jew's harp. 

The officers at that period filled forms about them- 
selves in odd moments. The most persistent and sug- 
gestive demanded the name of the relative one wished 
notified in case one should become a casualty. Whenever 
in America or France things got a little slack a request for 
that information would come around. It kept one, as it 
were, on one's toes. But we wondered why that bureau 
never got fed up with paper work. 

Into these daily conferences, almost at once, crept a 
sense of imminence. Huge bulletins descended from 
Division Hill dealing now in dates. They described with 
an admirable detail how the first of the draft men would 
be received. To aid us in this task non-commissioned 
officers, it was promised, would be sent us from the Regu- 

13 



14 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

lar Army. Tliey appeared one day — a score or so for our 
regiment. 

We looked at them. We looked at their service records. 
Then we looked at each other. We swallowed our first 
lesson in how to send, on order, one's best men to some 
other organization. Certainly, in this case, few com- 
manding officers had parted with their jewels. Some of 
these rough diamonds, we suspected from a comparison 
of dates, indeed, had been set in chevrons for our needs. 
There lay their records of battery punishments and courts 
martial. We pitied those distant, unknown commanders. 
If these were their best we shrank from picturing their 
days and nights with the worst. The audacity of the thing 
caught our imagination. There was, we felt, something 
to be had from it. They weren't all bad, by any means. 
Some became the most useful of soldiers. 

Our medical department arrived about the same time, 
a worried-looking little group, that trudged through the 
dust, dodging piles of lumber. It was led by Lieutenant 
James B. Parramore, who later became captain, and for a 
time, regimental surgeon. Lieutenant Dennis J. Cronin 
was assigned as 1st Battalion Surgeon, and Lieutenant 
Marshall A. Moore as 2nd Battalion Surgeon. 

That very day Dr. Parramore constructed a table in 
Regimental Headquarters. He placed upon it with proud 
gestures a tin of alcohol, a demijohn of castor oil, a few 
assorted pills, and gallons, literally, of iodine. He an- 
nounced himself open for business. 

Business, fortunately, was dull, so the adjutant reached 
out for Parramore's enlisted personnel, sat them on a 
bench in the hall, and — Behold! — ^for the first time Regi- 
mental Headquarters had orderhes. There was no doubt 
about it. We were growing. 

On September 27th the arrival of our chaplain, John 
J. Sheridan, was another reminder; and two days later the 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 15 

long dreamed of moment arrived. Five hundred and thirty- 
five recruits were assigned to the regiment. 

These men, of course, did not come directly to us from 
their local boards. We received them after two weeks' 
work of reception and assortment in which all the officers 
of the division shared. During that phase the once 
strange term "casual" became a by-word. For all the 
draft men arrived at Upton as casuals. Officers met the 
first train loads at Medford on September 15th. 

There are, let it be granted, few days in the history of 
our country more impressive than that one which saw the 
triumph of universal service and the birth of our great 
national army. But it is rather so from a distance, for 
in the minds of the officers and men who assisted there 
lingers beyond question, woven with the sublime, a pal- 
pable tracery of amazement and mirth. 

The draft came in ancient railroad coaches whose sides 
were trimmed with placards suggestive of an abnormally 
swift and terrible march to Berlin, via Upton; and a num- 
ber of penalties for the Kaiser, very ingeniously thought 
out. 

Then there was the provocative personal adornment. 
There had been word in the papers that all civilian cloth- 
ing worn to Upton would have to be cast away. So these 
young men took no chances. Tattered straw hats were 
thrust from the windows; crushed derbies, through which 
wisps of hair straggled; top hats, in a few cases, so vener- 
able that it was a pity to see them out of their sepulchres. 
And Palm Beach suits of previous summers were there, and 
the dinner jacket, an affair of generations, and the suit 
that had been worn on Sundays long before the owner's 
maturity. It was an assortment that would have taxed 
the sanity of a Hester Street dealer. 

You tried to sound the meaning of such a trip to these 
young citizens. You could only sense definitive separa- 



16 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

tions from borne and comfort and affection; a shrinking 
from our uniforms, which meant a disciphne, terrifying 
and undesired; and, perhaps, a perplexed apprehension, 
somewhere just ahead, of violence and the close of ex- 
perienced things. 

No mind, however, could linger on that side. There 
were too many races, clamorously asserting themselves. 
There had been too much made of a number of departures. 
There still lingered too many souvenirs of feasts. Out of 
the shadows slipped an eager voice. 

"Hay, Tony ! Finish off that bottle before these officer 
guys can grab it." 

And another, less concerned : 

" Grabba da hell. My gal, she givva me a charm against 
da evil eye of officers." 

And some had reached the point where speech ends. 

A man in uniform grew disgusted. 

"So," he grumbled, "that's what we've got to teach to 
fire a three inch gun!" 

But we knew he was wrong. He had judged by the high 
lights. In the really fundamental background we saw a 
sober and determined spirit. We felt even then the pres- 
ence of some of the best soldier material in the world. 

After meeting a few of these erratic train loads the least 
confident of shavetails could forecast his ordered garrison 
tasks with ease of mind. For such recruits weren't simple 
to control. 

When we gathered at night in J20 the gossip of every 
group revolved around the arriving casuals. 

"How many souses did you have to-day. Bill.?" 

"Two. One wanted to weep on my shoulder, and the 
other wanted to give me an uppercut." 

"What did you do about it?" 

"Ordered the fighting one to take care of the weeper." 

"Say! Did he?" 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 17 



"You bet. Closed both eyes so the tears couldn't get 
out, and satisfied himself at the same time. I remember 
he shouted as he swung: 'Hay, Boss ! It's a grand war!' " 

Those already in uniform, none the less, felt a quick 
sympathy for the newcomers. Their individualities 
slipped away from them so easily! At the station they 



VlHEN I 5AV, I 
SNftP INTO IT 
I MEftN To 
HAVE VoO SNAP 
5MAP INTO IT J 




Drawn by Musician Boyle, Hq. Co. 



were labelled and assigned to barracks. They were herded 
and marched in long, uncouth lines, to the hospital for 
physical examination. We formed squads and tried to 
instruct them in the school of the soldier. Rich and poor, 
Hebrew and Gentile, short and long, straw-hatted, felt- 
hatted, or without any hats at all, they faced us, eager, 
one knew, to learn. 

"One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Squad 
halt. Right face. Left face. About face." 

Those that couldn't speak English very well got the 
commands confused. Others had a curious lack of bal- 
ance. All had a disposition to laugh at mistakes and 
accidents, and to discuss and argue about them while in 
ranks at attention. 



18 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

At morning and evening roll-call argument was warm- 
est. No linguist existed, suflSciently facile to scan that 
list intelligibly. Sprinkled among remembered English 
names were pitfalls of Italian, Russian, Spanish, Lithuan- 
ian, German, even Chinese. 

"Krag — a — co — poul — o — wicz, G." 

The ofl&cer, calling the roll, would look up, expecting the 
response his triumph deserved. A protest would come, 
as likely as not in fluent lower New York accents: 

"Do yuh mean me? That ain't the way tuh say my 
name. Me own mother wouldn't recernize it." 

"Silence! Simply answer, 'here.'" 

In a tone of deep disgust: 

"Then I ain't here. That's all. I ain't here." 

An appreciative laugh would ripple down the ranks. 
Men learned to be officers and non-commissioned officers 
in those days. 

Afterwards the citizen soldiers would get their mess 
kits, and, sitting on burned stumps or Thompson-Starret 
rubbish, would eat a palatable meal. For the food was 
coming from somewheres, and the gear to dispose of it. 

We had noticed that Walters, Payne, and Savage were 
up to something. During long hours they sat in Regi- 
mental Headquarters studying documents. Then they 
filled out many forms, and sample clothing and equipment 
straggled into the barracks. This meant a new phase, 
and now, as we labelled, we equipped. We became tailors, 
hatters, booters. We would begin the night's work by 
choosing as comfortable a place as possible in the mess 
hall with a pile of pink qualification cards before us. The 
queue of awkward and pallid youths would form. 

"Name?" 

It would flow out in various accents. More frequently 
than not it v/ould demand painstaking spelling. 

Education, occupation, average wages, capacity for lead- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 19 

ership, ability to entertain, previous military experience 
— it all went down. There was one question in which 
we took a special interest. 

"For what branch of the service do you wish to express 
a preference?" 

Some had weighed the matter carefully. They believed 
themselves born to the Quartermaster's Corps, but the 
majority had not foreseen that interrogation, nor, if they 
had, it is likely that the meat of their answer would have 
had a different texture. Its sincerity was sometimes naive. 

"Oh, hell! I don't care, just so I lick the Choimans." 

We concentrated on the finest. Shamelessly we prosely- 
tized, out of this impromptu mission came some of the 
regiment's best. 

Those hours of dreary, yawning statistics, moreover, 
had their relieving moments. Here comes a slender 
young man in the familiar suit of remote beginnings. The 
officer asks him formally the formal question. 

"Wages in your last job-f^" 

"$50,000 a year." 

That officer, one recalls, rose to the occasion, for the 
young man was not boasting. 

"And I understand you wish to express a preference for 
the Field Artillery.?" 

Wasn't it Hoadley who faced a youth just the reverse 
of this last — that is, flashily tailored.'' 

"What can you furnish in the way of entertainment.''" 

"Me.'*" the flashy young man replied. "I could steer 
the village miser into a poker game, and, believe me, bo, 
I can make a deck of cards lay down and roil over. What's 
the idea.'' What d'ye mean? I got to split with you?" 

When he declared for the Cooks and Bakers his choice 
went down without argument. 

Afterwards we would line our charges up again and 
desert qualification cards for sample shoes and hats and 



20 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

clothing. Sizes were limited, and we hadn't suspected 
before nature's infinite variety in modeling the human 
form. We made an axiom at the start. The more pe- 
culiar the shape, the more particular the owner. 

"For the lova Mike, mister, I can't wear that coat. 
Makes me look as if I'd broke me breast bone." 

Or: 

"You got to melt me to get me into this." 

Everybody worked with patience and a desire to be 
fair, but, just the same, you had to make both ends meet 
and as the hours flew by you may have hurried a little. 

It was during these sessions that a rotund and good- 
natured oflacer gave us a stirring example and prophesied 
his own future. 

"You're in luck. That's a wonderful fit," you'd hear 
him say to a man with a 32 chest lost in a 36 blouse. 
"You're a perfect 36. Might have been cut for you." 

The man would gather a fistfull of the excess cloth, 
stretching it towards the officer. 

"Cut for an elephant." 

"The tailor will alter it so it won't look like the same 
blouse." 

"I'm not saying anything about its looks. All I'm 
saying is maybe it isn't quite big enough for a good-sized 
elephant." 

The oflacer 's buttons would stretch. 

"If you want to get along in the army, young man, 
you'll do as you're told. I wouldn't mind wearing that 
blouse myself." 

"But," an officer would whisper to him. "You're not 
quite as big as a good-sized elephant." 

The officer would grin and continue to show us how to 
make the best of the material in hand. 

"That hat isn't too big for you," he would call out in 
his cheery voice. "Gives your hair a chance to grow." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 21 

So we struggled on through the days and nights until 
the first quota was classified and at least partially equipped. 
And out of that quota came for us, as related, five hundred 
and thirty-five recruits — not far from half a regiment. 

"The men we're to live and fight and die with," someone 
said. 

It wasn't to turn out quite like that. We didn't foresee 
the wholesale transfers, the all-night conferences when 
officers and non-coms tried to do the fair thing without 
destroying their organizations. Still those dark days of 
transfers fall more reasonably in another chapter. For 
the present we were a trifle hypnotized by our growth and 
our power. We looked along the lines, guessing at the 
good and the bad for, like all regiments, we had both. 

The faces we saw were pretty white, and the frames not, 
as a rule, powerful. For we were a part of the Metro- 
politan Division. Most of our men came from the crowded 
places of New York. Out of city dwellings, offices, sub- 
ways, and sweatshops they poured into the wind-swept 
reaches of Upton. They knew none of the tricks a boy 
picks up in the country that fits him, after a fashion, for 
such fighting as we were destined for in the Vosges, on the 
Vesle and Aisne, in the Argonne, and on the Meuse. 

"Will soldiers grow from such material?" visitors asked. 

From the start officers and men knew the answer as 
affirmative. Day by day beneath the bland autumn sun 
faces bronzed, chests seemed to expand and shoulders to 
broaden before the tonic of physical labor. For it wasn't all 
drill. The miracles continued, but there weren't enough ci- 
vilian workmen available to construct the city, to clear vast 
spaces for drilling, and to arrange artillery and small-arms 
ranges. So orders came for the draft men to pitch in and 
help. Thus commenced the cheerful game of stump pulling. 

Of our original quota there are very few that couldn't 
qualify as expert destroyers of wildernesses. The famous 



22 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

skinned diamond exists as a monument to our skill. The 
target range is a document written in the passionate sweat 
of our brows. 

During this education the first effects of discipline were 
apparent. Faces might darken with rage or whiten from 
weariness, but in the realized presence of a superior work 
went on without too painful comment. Occasionally, if 
hidden through chance by a screen of bushes, you might 
hear burning opinions of army life in general and stump 
snatching in particular. At school we had been taught 
that the average man's vocabulary is scarcely more than 
five hundred words. The understatement is obvious. 
Any soldier of the 305th who couldn't apply as many ad- 
jectives as that to the common noun "stump " was frowned 
upon as mentally deficient or as one affecting an ultra 
religious pose. 

Such tasks were, in a sense, a digging of a pitfall for 
one's own feet. As the skinned diamond expanded our 
drills waxed proportionately ambitious. But the entire 
process was performing another miracle. Where formerly 
had slouched slovenly ranks appeared now straight lines 
of soldierly figures, heads up and shoulders squared, exud- 
ing a joy in things military. 

"What's all this guff about West Point-f*" you'd hear. 
"Watch my outfit drill any day." 

And the veterans of a week or so exposed a most amusing 
tolerance for newer recruits. The difference between a 
uniform and civilian clothing created an extensive gulf. 
In a few days it would be bridged. The awkward squad 
of the day before would face the awkward squad of to-day 
with expressions of veteran contempt. For the recruits 
poured in during October. On the first we received one 
hundred and thirteen, on the ninth one hundred and eighty- 
three, on the tenth two hundred and fifty-four, on the 
twelth, two hundred and eight. So that by the end of 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 23 





'ow Yoo Felt the fiest T/Me the 

MEPICAL OFFICER, USED Voul? ARM FoR A PiN CuSHlON 
Draion by Musician Boyle, Hq. Co. 

that month we had forty-one officers assigned, eighteen 
attached, and one thousand three hundred and thirteen 
enhsted men. The 305th was a regiment. All we needed 
were horses and guns to realize that we were, indeed, artil- 
lery, designed to throw projectiles at the Huns. 

To give variety to our stump-pulling sport Colonel Doyle 
called our attention to certain long, low and harmless- 
appearing buildings across Fifth Avenue. Still living in 
the J section, remote from these constructions, the men 
hadn't suspected in them any further spur to their vocab- 
ularies. Now, it seemed, they were to be our stables. The 
civilian workmen's responsibility had ceased when they 
had put up sides and roofs. The rest we must do. We 
had many fences to build around them, and more land to 
clear for riding rings and paddocks. We were encouraged 
to enormous efforts on October 18th when the government 
presented us with eight mules. They were led to the most 
comfortable stable. They were treated as honored guests. 

Quite fittingly, our first veterinarian, Lieutenant North, 
arrived soon after. 



24 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The problem of our missing field officer was solved on 
October 14th when Major Thomas J. Johnson reported. 
No one had an opportunity just then to know him very- 
well or to judge him competently. It wasn't until we had 
reached France that we were to realize our good fortune. 
For on October 26th he was detailed to the School of Fire 
at Fort Sill. Major Wanvig left for the same destination 
on November 7th. 

Without formal battalion commanders the work of the 
regiment continued, in view of the lack of equipment, 
amazingly well. Reserve officers of only a few months' 
training displayed exceptional qualities of leadership. 
New soldiers wanted to learn. An artilleryman must be 
able to do more than use a sight, work a breach, or pull 
the lanyard. The chances of the draft had given the 305th 
a number of highly-educated specialists for the more com- 
plicated work of conduct of fire, and the delicate details 
of scouting and communication. To that important extent 
the regiment was already better off than some of the older 
organizations. By day the officers instructed and drilled 
the men, and by night the officers went to school them- 
selves to Colonel Doyle and Lieutenant Colonel Stimson, 
who did the best they could with the slight material at 
hand to keep us abreast of artillery developments in the 
war zone. When finally we got to France we were over- 
whelmed to realize all we had to learn. 

When now we glanced from the slope of Division Hill 
at the bleak landscape which only a few weeks before had 
aroused our skepticism we saw barracks, quarters, and 
department buildings rising from the ashes of the forest. 

Piecemeal, during October, the regiment moved from 
the J section to its own area. The change was complete 
on October 24th. As we had policed J and its vicinity 
so we made our surroundings in M neat and military. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 25 

Officers and men received a fortunate impression of per- 
manence. As long as we remained in Upton we would 
have our own home. Things, we felt in our ignorance, were 
going well. Even a band had been collected, and could 
play one or two pieces in public with comparative safety. 

During the latter part of October and the first part of 
November the officers were brought a little closer to their 
mission. They were conducted by twos and threes to 
Sandy Hook to watch the practical working of projectiles 
and fuses; and forty attended a six-day artillery course in 
New Haven under the experienced instruction of Captain 
Dupont, of the French Army, and Captains Bland and 
Massey, of the Canadian artillery. 

It was on these trips that most of the officers saw for the 
first time the famous soixante-quinze. They admired it 
as a piece of artillery perfection without being able to guess 
that it would be their companion for many months, a thing 
nearly as animate as the men who served it. 

What we actually got at Upton at this time was a single 
battery of venerable three-inch guns, relics of the 51st 
Field Artillery Brigade, New England National Guard. 
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson snared this for us, together 
with much other useful equipment which aroused the envy 
of less fortunate organizations who didn't have a former 
secretary of war. Certainly one battery among six was 
better than none. 

When the guns arrived on November 10th the regiment 
gathered around them, patted them fondly, examined their 
mechanism, peered down their throats. 

Pride leaped. 

"God help Jerry when we show him these!" 

But Jerry never saw them. Perhaps one day in the 
dust of some ordnance museum they may be observed by 
all the world — precious relics of the extended battle of the 
305th at Camp Upton. 



Ill 

AND BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH PAPER 
WORK 

Paper Work had now become our perpetual com- 
panion. Neither by night nor by day did he leave us 
lonely. He strutted at mess. He paraded across the 
drill ground. He sat by one's cot through the troubled 
watches of the night. It becomes, therefore, necessary 
to study the creature's habits. 

Let us take a fanciful case that everyone can understand, 
since even in those early days Corn Willy was omnipres- 
ent. Let us suppose that a mess officer desires some 
information about this old friend. His impulse might 
be to dash off a note like this : 

"Capt. Blank. Dear Sir: Having heard that you've 
made a life study of the subject, it's occurred to me that 
you might tell me how it is possible to make Corn Willy 
palatable." 

If one didn't care to bother the colonel about details of 
paper work. Captain Gammell was always glad to put one 
right. 

"Not at all, my dear young mess officer. Not at all. 
You must send it through channels." 

"I don't think his office is far away. I might just run 
up and see him." 

"What nonsense, my poor ignorant young mess officer! 
In that case what record would exist of this matter?" 

So picture the mess officer in question studying in "Army 
Paper Work" all about going through channels. As a 
result he might turn out something Hke the following : 

26 



HISTORY OF sooth FIELD ARTILLERY 27 

"Camp Upton, N. Y. 
"October— ,1917. 
From: 2nd Lt. Blank, 
To: C. O. Dep't of Household Enemies. 
Subject: Corn Willy. 

I. Information is desired as to any known method of 
making corn willy palatable. 

(sig) John Blank, 

2nd Lt., 305th F.A. 

That would occupy some two inches on a sheet of fools- 
cap. A few months later Lt. Blank, probably in charge 
of stables now, might receive a breathless messenger, 
bearing a huge envelope with his original sheet of foolscap 
pinned to reams of indorsements. These would run some- 
thing like this : 

1st Ind. From C. O., Bat'ry Blank, To C. O., 305th 
F.A. 

1. Forwarded. 

2. Approved. 

2nd Ind. From C. O., 305th F. A. to Com. Gen. 152nd 
F. A. Brigade, with, perhaps, a paragraph or two. 

3rd Ind., From Com. Gen. 152nd F. A. Brigade, to Com. 
Gen. 77th Division, with, perhaps, several paragraphs, 
scarcely ever more than a word in length. 

4th Ind., From Com. Gen., 77th Div., to Adjutant 
General of the Army. 

1. For investigation of record of Private C. Willy. 

5th Ind., From Adjutant General of the Army to Com. 
Gen., 77th Div. 

1. Received. 

2. Contents noted. 

3. No record. 

4. Should be forwarded to Quartermaster General of the 
Army. 



28 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

6th Ind. From Com. Gen. 77th Div. to Quartermaster 
General of the Army. 

7th Ind. From Quartermaster General of the Army, to 
C. O. Subsistence Division. 

8th Ind. C. O. Subsistence Division, to Chief Q. M., 
Dep't of East. 

9th Ind. Chief Q. M., Dep't of East to C. O. Eastern 
Subdivision Department of Household Enemies. 

10th Ind., From C. O. Eastern Subdivision of House- 
hold Enemies to Lt. Blank. (Through Channels) 

1. Received. 

2. Contents noted. 

3. No method Known. 

"What shall I do with it now that I've got it.?" asks Lt. 
Blank. 

"What would you suppose?" is the tolerant answer of 
the expert. "It has become a matter of official record. 
Consequently it must be preserved for ever, or nearly so. 
File it away." 

"There isn't much room left in our barracks," says 
Blank hopelessly. 

But the expert, you may be sure, doesn't let him brood 
over that very long. 

"Your morning report was in a shocking state to-day. 
Blank." 

"But I sat up all night, making out individual horse 
records." 

"No excuse. How many horses have you got, anyway? " 

Blank gulps. 

"In the stables, or on paper?" 

He retreats with visions of facing charges. 

That matter of preparing charges, by the way, sprinkled 
with gray the temples of organization commanders, and the 
scanning of charge sheets made many an enlisted man 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 



fancy his last hour had arrived. Every "Whereas," and 
"In that he did", must be in its proper place; and, no 
matter how accurately the sheet might set forth the vivid 
language usually employed by the accused, unless "or 
words to that effect " capped the quotation the whole busi- 
ness was sent back to the drawer with caustic comment. 
In those days men learned to be expert witnesses, and 
officers became judge advocates, 
counsels for the defence, and 
judges with supreme power. But 
most of the cases brought before 
the regimental courts martial 
were not vicious ones. There 
really were surprisingly few of 
any sort. It was inevitable we 
should have one type of case, for 
home was very near Camp Up- 
ton, and passes were not plentiful. 
A handful of men, when they 
did get home, found it strangely 
simple to miss the proper trains 
back. When they missed too 
many, battery punishment 
wouldn't cover the crime, and 
they had to stand trial. 

Tuesday was the worst day. 
Then such little dramas as this were not infrequent: 

Scene: The orderly room. Battery Commander at his 
desk, outwardly tyrranous and uncompromising; at heart, 
fighting a very human sympathy (Some battery com- 
manders have been known to wish that they, too, might 
have stayed an extra twenty-four hours with their families) . 
Opposite: Culprit stands, shame-faced, pulling at his hat. 
B. C. — Stop pulHng at your hat. Stand at attention. 
(Culprit snaps his heels together) 




Drawn by Musician Boyle, Hq. Co. 
Reflections on Liberty were 
alike at Upton and in France 



30 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

B. C. — Now, Doe, what possible excuse have you for 
overstaying your pass twenty -four hours? The time was 
written down. The other men got back. You know 
what it means. Doe, to be A. W. O. L. 

(That sequence of four letters has a sound suggestive of 
blank walls and firing squads.) 

Culprit, (Head drooping, voice thin and tremulous) 
Well, sir, you see me mother-in-law was down already 
with the rheumatiz. She was that bad that 

B. C, (Impatiently) Go on. Go on. 

Culprit, (less confident) — and me wife was took Sunday 
night with the same terrible disease. I was just leaving 
for the train, too, and I couldn't get a doctor, and — 

B. C. (In an arctic voice) That's enough. Doe. Those 
excuses were old when Noah overstayed his leave from the 
ark. 

Culprit — (A gleam of disappointed tears in his eyes) 
I told 'em I wouldn't get away with it, but, hones' to Gawd, 
Captain, they was the best lies we could think of, and me 
mother-in-law said the last thing: "Stick to it, Tim, no 
matter what your cocky ofiicer says." 

In an army, plentifully sprinkled with men of German 
or Austrian descent, it was, of course, necessary to be cau- 
tious. "When is an enemy alien not an enemy alien?" 
became for a time the pet riddle of the paper workers. 
From month to month the successful answer appeared to 
alter, yet, except from the point of view of paper work, it 
troubled us little. 

There were, however, conscientious objectors — not many, 
just enough to irritate soldiers who couldn't express their 
displeasure in a natural, fistic fashion without infringing 
the law. Were the most of these creatures nervous or 
sincere, men asked? Their days and nights in barracks, I 
fancy, weren't to be coveted. For a conscientious objector, 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 31 

whose sincerity you couldn't question, you might conceive 
a certain admiration, but with such a war facing a nation 
the burden of proof, unfortunately, rests on the objector. 

Worst of all, conscientious objectors complicated paper 
work. From many sources came orders and suggestions 
as to their treatment; and when they flagrantly refused 
to obey commands, as they had a nasty habit of doing, they 
had to be courtmartialed, and they usually picked the 
most inconvenient times for their performances, arguing, 
perhaps, that salvation lay there. We desired to see the 
last of them. But how? Providence reaches its ends in 
devious ways. 

This is really not straying to another topic. Just then 
one of our castles tumbled. We weren't going to live, 
fight, and die together as we had started at Upton. Spe- 
cific orders commenced to arrive, demanding large numbers 
of men. Up to the end of November we had lost by trans- 
fer two assigned officers, two attached officers, and 346 
men. We got in return First Lieutenant Frederick H. 
Brophy, of the dental corps, on October 16th; Second 
Lieutenants George H. Hodenpyl, Karl R. McNair, and 
William A. Walsh, on November 12th; Second Lieutenant 
H. Stanley Wanzer, on November 22d; and some straggling 
enlisted replacements. 

It is impossible to say where those friends of a few weeks 
went. They left, more often than not as casuals, bound 
for some remote division in the South or West. We didn't 
see them again. 

This abrupt snapping of barrack ties painted for us more 
colorfully the serious nature of our new profession. With 
a sober comprehension we watched the small bands of 
casuals, bent beneath blue barrack bags, go lurching down 
Fourth Avenue to the station — away from Upton, away 
from us who had more often than not learned to like them, 
away from the land of passes home. 



32 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

The philosophy of the average soldier is direct and com- 
petent. It was after such an exodus that one explained to 
his companions during mess : 

"What's the use of grouching? That's what war is — 
saying good-by. Just saying good-by, fellows. Might's 
well get used to it now." 

These partings, nevertheless, weren't all sentiment. 
Let us value them at one-third regret and two-thirds paper 
work. The orders demanding them frequently slipped 
into the regimental area during the quiet hours before the 
dawn. Anything that awakened you was known as a 
Trick Order. Trick Orders seldom came singly. For 
several nights running they would glide in, lights would 
gleam from orderly rooms until shamed by the sun, and 
all those concerned would display at reveille acute symp- 
toms of insomnia. There was no evasion when trick orders 
rustled through the camp. If a battery commander 
sought a way by preparing a list against unexpected trans- 
fers. Paper Work merely sneered, thinking of the devices 
he had up his sleeve. At three a. m., it might be, a red- 
eyed battery clerk would appear at a captain's cot. 

"Sorry to disturb you, sir." 

A groan. 

"Barracks on fire?" 

"No, sir. An order's just come to transfer five men." 

The captain cries out, sitting up. 

"Don't you know this is the first sleep I've had for three 
nights.? Didn't I give you a list just so I could get some 
sleep.?" 

"Yes, sir," replies the battery clerk gently, "but this 
is a very tricky trick order. The men are to be reported 
at the station fully equipped, at 5:30 this a. m. They'll 
be equipped, even though the supply sergeant does lead 
a hunted life for a while. Meantime I've brought the 
service records for the captain to initial." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 33 

The battery commander surrenders, convinced that, 
no matter how artfully you may dodge, paper work will 
always tag you around the corner. 

The preparation of these lists for transfers was a delicate 
matter. That's why the subject wasn't changed when 
we slipped away from conscientious objectors a moment 
ago. 

Some soldiers, clearly , could be better spared than others. 
A few, ojEEcers and men desired enormously to get rid of. 
But we couldn't picture running along at all without the 
greater part. It had been impressed upon us that by 
"men " was meant men of the first quality. At conferences 
on the subject developed a touching and sublime faith in 
human nature, an out-and-out belief that in the very worst 
of artillerymen resides a mine of extraordinary virtue only 
requiring the delving of the receiving oflBcer. And, one 
might add, even in the very most conscientious of con- 
scientious objectors. ... 

The battery commander glances up from his roster. 

"Could we," he asks, "spare this man Richard Roe?" 

"It would be like amputating a limb," a lieutenant 
answers, "but it might be managed." 

The battery commander grunts. 

"Didn't realize he was as bad as that. What the deuce 
is the matter with him? Isn't he strong and handy? 
Doesn't he look like a soldier?" 

"If you look hard the other way." 

The first sergeant says in a small voice. 

"He's a conscientious objector, sir." 

"Goodness gracious! I'd quite forgot that." 

"Do we sit in judgment on a man's religion?" someone 
asks gruffly. 

"My dear boy! It isn't a religion at all. It's a state 
of nerves." 

"I don't care what any one says," the lieutenant puts 



34 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

in, "he's got the makings of a good soldier — if properly- 
handled." 

The battery commander's indignation is arresting. 

" Who's been mishandling him here? It's clear someone 
has, and I'll look into that later. I'm bound every man 
shall get a fair show. It's clear that Doe isn't getting his 
here. No matter whose fault now. I'm going to give him 
his show — send him where he'll get all that's coming to 
him. Put his name on the list for transfer." 

One day the trickiest of trick orders came down. No 
more conscientious objectors would be transferred. An 
attempt would be met by the return of the objector and 
the prompt trial of the offending officer. The 305th 
read the thing complacently, glancing down the sturdy 
brown lines. It had no significance for us then. Had 
we ever had a conscientious objector? No one seemed 
able to recall. At any rate there was none then. There 
was none when we sailed for France. 

Now and then the trick orders contained troublesome 
particulars. Perhaps an organization would be called on 
to furnish a man equipped to become a battery or com- 
pany clerk. Then the committee on transfers would 
really get down to work, for good battery clerks were as 
rare as good first sergeants. You can see the members 
anxiously scanning again and again the well-worn quali- 
fication cards. You can picture the shaking of heads, 
the helpless frowns. Then, perhaps, you can remember 
one speaking up victoriously. 

"Here's the very bird." 

"Read the chief particulars of his qualification card," 
the chairman demands. 

The other holds the card to the light, declaiming in a 
sing-song voice : 

"Tvan Stroffowski. Born in Russia. Occupation: 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 35 

push cart peddler. Education: None. Neither reads 
nor writes EngHsh.' " 

The members of the committee glance at each other. 
A tentative whisper filters through the room. It isn't 
one whisper. It is a sibilant chorus. 

' ' Ivan ! Thou art the man ! " 

Aside from Trick Orders and routine paper work, there 
were family allotments, insurance allotments, and liberty 
loan allotments. And it mustn't be forgotten here that 
up to October 28th the regiment had gone into its pocket 
and subscribed $70,300 to the second liberty loan. All 
of these records figured on the pay-rolls, at the making up 
of which Paper Work had some of his cheeriest moments. 
Pay-rolls, too, gave the men rather more than their share 
of paper work. Everybody recalls that spirited lyric, 
set to the tune of "John Brown's Body." 

"All we do is sign the pay-roll. 
All we do is sign the pay-roll. 
All we do is sign the pay-roll. 
And we never get a blank, blank cent." 

Like much poetry, this was a trifle exaggerated, for on 
pay day, when the long lines formed, there was always 
some real money on the orderly room table. Neverthe- 
less, on pay day night groups could be heard intoning 
such another lyric of the war as this: 

"The U. S. pays us thirty per. 
Or so the papers say; 
But if you get a dollar ten. 
It's a heluva big pay day." 

Yet consider the soldier who gets nothing — the replace- 
ment, perhaps, who was entrusted with his own service 
record and who has lost it. 



36 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"Do you know what this means?" the captain snaps 
at him. "Do you reahze your entire record is gone — 
punishments and rewards, clothing, allotments, every- 
thing? Do you understand that without your service 
record you can't be paid?" 

The replacement glances at the paper work suspended 
from the walls, littering the table, overflowing to the floor. 
His lip trembles. 

"I don't know much, sir, since I got inteh the army." 

And, as the captain glances at the paper work, too, there 
flashes through his mind: 

"How much this man and I have in common!" 



IV 
ON THE RANGE 

We learned things, in spite of that curse of efficiency. 
Simulation. Cold weather found us well along in standing 
gun drill. One battery would get the pieces one hour, 
another the next, and so on. Caissons simulated pieces, 
and limbers, caisson. But we got the mechanics of laying, 
loading, and firing, and the specialists learned enough to 
make panoramic sketches of the dreary Upton landscape 
and to lay telephone lines in suicidal fashion. Stirring in 
every mind, moreover, 
was the desire to hear the 
crack of a rifle and the 
rush of its projectile. 

That wouldn't be long ^ ^ 
now, for the target range ^^^^, 
was progressing. Large 
signs at neighboring 
crossroads warned the 
countryside of danger. 
When, we asked, were 
we going to justify such violent displays? 

The range outlined to many of us for the first time our 
mission. It is one thing to call out at drill a range of 
5,000. It is quite another to walk from a projected gun 
position to a target 5,000 yards away. 

The range impressed us as enormous. Without reaching 
its boundaries you could walk across it for hours. Its 
broad stretches of woodland and brush appeared scarcely 

37 




Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D 
A quiet game in a mess hall at Upton 



38 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

scarred by the months of our labor. It hadn't been in- 
tended, for that matter, that they should be. The plan 
had been to have the range masquerade as an actual battle 
terrain. About the target areas, however, many acres 
had been cleared, and with a few thrills. 

The conflagration happened on a sharp December after- 
noon. Considering the labor, the hunger, the investiga- 
tions that accompanied and followed it, it would be an 
affectation of conservatism to speak of the thing as a mere 
fire. 

Brushwood mysteriously caught at the far end, sprang 
to the woods, and, a spreading column of flames and smoke 
before a half gale, swept towards our mushroom city. 
Practically the entire regiment worked the latter part 
of the afternoon and half the night getting the flames 
under control and some toiled for an indefinite period try- 
ing to fix the blame. That was never done, but for months 
shadows hung over suspected spots, and Colonel Doyle's 
lips were often severe. 

Yet the accident wasn't without benefit. Those who 
surveyed the charred areas pronounced the range about 
cleared for action. 

Horses still lacked. The range was some miles from 
camp. To get our guns there with a shadow of dignity 
or comfort we would need horses. While we lacked such 
vital transport, indeed, we could not look upon ourselves 
as a real Field Artillery regiment. 

There had been rumors. There always are about 
everything, but early in December an amazingly real 
order came to send details to the remount depot. On 
December 10th eighty-seven horses were brought up and 
quartered in our stables. 

They didn't appeal to us as at all what we would have 
chosen for our own stalls. They fell into two classes — 
cavalry and artillery, that is, individual mounts and draft 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 39 

animals. They were shaggy and unkempt. Some seemed 
overburdened by the cares of Hfe. Others endeavored to 
express through vivacious gestures a desire to get at the 
greener officers and men who hitherto had been mounted 
only in the tables of organization. 

Often, while struggling with the curious replacements we 
received in France, did we look back wistfully to these our 
first and best animals. 

From this moment Paper Work clutched at Department 
B officers and stable sergeants. 

The horses arrived just in time for our first target prac- 
tice, which was scheduled for December 12th. 

Each of four batteries had the pleasure of harnessing, 
with make-shift harness, a team of the new, untried ani- 
mals to a piece and drawing it from the park to the range. 

That day, everyone will recall, was the first bitter one 
of an uncommonly severe winter. It distilled in those 
horses a vaunting ambition. It nearly, in consequence, 
upset one carriage, and it delayed the rest because of cold 
hands and stiff equipment. 

Cannoneers and spare drivers stood in line along Fourth 
Avenue, between Fifteenth and Seventeenth Streets. 
The scarlet battery guidons fluttered before a frozen wind. 
Yet, as the first carriage appeared at the top of the grade, 
there was a satisfied warmth in all our hearts. At least 
a share of all the trappings was ours. We could grin and 
shout "Finis" to that inefficient monster. Simulation. 

The carriages rumbled down the slope, swaying from 
side to side. The drivers didn't look happy. More often 
than not the near horses were out of hand. Some animals 
pulled; others ambled, enjoying the prospect. But the 
carriages did advance. It was these city -bred men, 
abruptly informed that they were artillery drivers, who 
controlled untrained stock to that extent. 

They got past the difficult turn into Seventeenth Street. 



40 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Later they swung with more confidence into the Middle 
Island Road. They drew the guns into position. They 
trotted off with the limbers in really dashing fashion. 

The dismounted men marched out. They were sta- 
tioned near the guns so that they might see exactly what 
happens when the lanyard of a three inch rifle is pulled 
with a shell in the breach. 

Later we may have fired as many as 8,000 rounds in an 
evening, while to-day we were to expend only 19. But 
many soldiers were to hear for the first time the sharp 
crack of the piece, and the swishing, rocket-like flight of 
the projectile; were to watch that pleasing white ball of 
smoke, like a pretty cloud appearing without warning, 
that is a shrapnel burst. 

In order that all this might be appreciated the target 
was in clear view from the vicinity of the guns, although 
indirect laying was to be used. 

News of the event had spread. Officers of the 304th 
and 306th came to admire. Several officers of marines 
walked up the road. Where they had come from no one 
knew, and there was too much else on hand to bother about 
finding out. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson was to fire the first problem. 
He walked with Colonel Doyle and a knot of officers to the 
observatory a few hundred yards ahead. Everything 
seemed to be ready. Lieutenant Hoyt, in charge of the 
range party, was said to be down near the target. As soon 
as he announced that the range was clear 

Crews from each battery were to fire in turn. The bat- 
tery commander and his executive ran here and there, giv- 
ing final words of advice to the gun squads, examining the 
sights, inspecting for one last time the bores. The tele- 
phone officers and their details struggled with the primitive 
system of communication. There were no switchboards. 
All lines were party lines. There would have been no 



HISTORY OF S05ih FIELD ARTILLERY 41 

wire if a friend of Colonel Stimson's hadn't presented the 
regiment with sixty miles or so of heavy twisted pair. Yet 
we were quite proud of that net. We had done our best 
according to the sacred precepts of Volume III. One 
shudders trying to conceive what it would have done to us 
at the front. Anyway it worked most of that afternoon 
in the winter peace of Long Island. We limited our faith, 
however. On nearby crests lonely figures etched against 
a sullen sky the broad strokes of the semaphore code. We 
had even erected two wireless stations, using Lieutenant 
Church's home-made set. They didn't work particularly, 
but they looked exactly as well as if they had. It took an 
expert to know one way or the other. 

The men, standing waist-deep in the underbrush, shak- 
ing from the cold, and, probably, a little, too, from the 
excitement, craned their necks in the direction of the tar- 
get, 2,000 yards away. 

The white flag on the hill continued to flutter, advertis- 
ing that there was no firing and that the range was safe. 
We knew, until white was replaced by red, nothing of 
interest to us would happen. The gray afternoon waned. 
Cannoneers blew impatiently on their hands. The ranks 
in the underbrush stamped their feet and waved their arms, 
setting up a crackling like the advance of a vast army. 
Little groups ran up and down the road to keep warm. 
Whispers lost their stealth, became audible, burst into an 
impatient chorus. 

"Why don't they shoot and let us go home?" 
Through the mysterious army channels of rumor drifted 
down a fact. 

"Somebody was seen on the range nearly an hour ago, 
and they haven't been able to find him." 

"Where's Hoyt? Why doesn't Hoyt get him off ? " 
"Hoyt's on the range, seeking the cheerful villain." 
The executive strode to a man stretched beneath a 



42 HISTORY OF 305 th FIELD ARTILLERY 

shelter tent with the receiver of a service buzzer at his ear. 

"Get me the observatory." 

(Or didn't we call it B. C. station in those ignorant 
days.f*) 

After a time the operator passed him the receiver and 
transmitter. 

"It isn't altogether clear, sir." 

"Observatory?" 

A pause. 

"Hello! Hello! Hello! Observatory? Hello! Hello! 
Hello! (Very low.) My God! (Very high.) Hello !— Hello !— 
Hello!" 

The telephone officer stood by, watching. He made a 
gesture of disgust. 

"Don't say 'Hello!'" he offered. "It's meaningless. 
It only wastes time. It never gets you anywheres." 

If a telephone officer has ever talked to you like that 
when you held a dead instrument and big things were 
afoot, you need precisely no analysis of the executive's 
emotions. 

The executive sprang up, casting the offending parts 
from him. He glanced dangerously at the telephone officer. 
He, as they say, collected himself. 

"I've said 'hello!' all my life," he muttered, "and I'll 
admit it's never got me less than it has this afternoon." 

"Oh, don't get sore," the telephone officer said breezily. 

The executive confided quite in private. 

" If you do as well as this at the front the Huns will court 
martial the first man that hurts you." 

"Buzz it," the telephone officer said indifferently. 

The executive chained his wrath. 

"I'd rather give it to you straight. Want any more?" 

"No, no," said the telephone officer pityingly. "I 
mean your message. The buzzer often goes through when 
the voice won't." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 43 

"Oh!" 

The executive turned to the operator, 

"Tell them it's nearly dark, and what the deuce is the 
delay?" 

A whining buzz came from the shelter tent. It lacked 
conviction. 

"Your man up there got the Saint Vitus dance?" the 
executive wanted to know. 

On the nearest crest one of the lone figures was now etch- 
ing with eager and excited strokes. 

"Says," the private in observation read off, "Colonel — 
Doyle — wants — to — know — why — wire — communication 
— has — ceased — ^func — tion — ing." 

"Test your instrument," the telephone oflScer called to 
the man in the tent, "and you," he ordered another, "get 
out on the line." 

A stooped figure threaded the underbrush, letting the 
wire run through his fingers. In a few minutes he was 
back, saluting. 

"Line was cut, sir, not fifty yards out there." 

"Probably one of your cannoneers," the telephone officer 
complained to the executive. "They must learn that 
wires are sacred. Court-martial offense — carelessness 
with wires." 

"Speaking of courts martial," the executive whispered. 
"Remember that the Hun that hurts you'll be tried by 
some bigger Hun." 

"Got you the first time," the telephone officer grinned. 

Behold! The white flag fluttering down! The red 
flag streaming up! 

"Lieutenant Hoyt is back," came over the wire. "The 
range is clear." 

The chief actors became rigid and expectant. 

"Cannoneers posts!" 



44 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The men sprang to the pieces hke a football formation 
jumping into play. From the shelter tent the operator 
commenced to shout out the firing data that drifted over 
the repaired wire from the observatory. 

"Aiming point that bare pine tree five mils to the left 
of the left hand edge of target. Deflection, six- three 
hundred and fifty. On second piece open ten. Site 
three hundred. Korrector thirty. Battery right. Two 
thousand." 

The sights and the tubes responded to the febrile mo- 
tions of our amateurs. The executive repeated the com- 
mands one by one. You fancied that through the taut 
atmosphere came their echoes from the far target. 

A captain ran along the line, verifying the laying. There 
was no longer any stirring in the underbrush, nor any 
movement on the road. A branch snapped. Lt. Norman 
Thirkield, the recording officer, balanced in a tree, pre- 
cariously raised his glasses. 

The brown cloth of the shelter tent bulged. The voice 
of the operator ran with awed vibrations across the tight 
silence. 

"Fire when ready!" 

The executive raised his hand. He brought it down with 
a sharp motion, bawling out: 

"Fire!" 

The section chief of the first piece repeated the gesture 
and the command. The silence was destroyed. It seemed 
to fall away before the snapping concussion of the dis- 
charge, and the departure, invisible but fairly sensed, of 
the projectile. 

The operator cried: 

"On the way!" 

The first shot fired by the 305 tli sailed majestically over 
Long Island. 

In succession the other pieces followed, and far off, in the 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 45 

general direction of the target, one by one, appeared after 
several seconds the white smoke balls. 

The stirrings in the brushwood recommenced. A great 
sigh went up. It resembled an exclamation of childish 
wonder. 

A relaxation took place. It was as if with that first 
shot we had altered from an inert, incoherent thing into a 
body abounding with an ordered and flexible purpose. We 
sensed it as we swung back through the sharp, early dusk. 
The rumbling of the carriages behind us expressed it. Ahead 
the lights of camp twinkled at us with a new appreciation. 
We had made a crossing. 

We said good-by that night for a long period to Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Stimson. He had been ordered to report 
to the port of embarkation at Hoboken for transportation 
to France. That firing of the first problem was his last 
duty with the 305th until he rejoined us nearly six months 
later when we were training in the south of France. After 
that, until a few days before we sailed. Colonel Doyle was 
the only field ofiicer with the regiment. 

On the thirteenth we took our materiel to the range 
again and fired ten rounds at the same target, Captain 
Gammell conducting. 

Glancing back from our veteran viewpoint, it may re- 
quire a difficult focus to see those pitifully few rounds in 
their just perspective. Each one might have been a 
priceless jewel released by some patriotic collector. It 
took the better part of two afternoons to sprinkle their 
contents on the target, or near it. They were responsible 
for hours of discussion in preparation, and evenings of the 
same in retrospect. Every burst became the subject of 
orations. Each was recorded on special forms, and the 
War Department in general and the ordnance people in 
particular were told all about it. Temporarily one of the 



46 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

shell cases was mislaid. The dark eye of suspicion rested 
on possible souvenir hunters. Those in any way responsi- 
ble were frowned upon as unique criminals, because that 
was in the days before the Regular Army got over its ritual 
attitude towards ammunition. Only when the case had 
been found did the atmosphere clear. 

We had trained for more than three months before firing 
the precious twenty -nine, and we were to wait more than 
three months before firing another; but — ^for one must 
focus — they taught us what a rifle would do if rationally 
treated. Each gun squad had had a chance. Incredul- 
ity as to sights and scales and instruments of precision 
had been demolished by the men's own labor. To that 
measure they had already become artillerymen. 

It was of even greater advantage that those nineteen 
rounds had let us measure the results of our training. We 
could judge ourselves and each other; could see that, on 
the whole, we were good. The various details had had 
practical experience. Operators had actually transmitted 
over lines laid by their own hands words of the highest 
importance. 

Twenty -nine rounds at twenty-five dollars a round! 
They did more to make our regiment find itself than mil- 
lions of dollars spent in other ways. 



V 

HOLIDAYS AND RUMORS 

During these thrilling days the powers of administra- 
tion had not by any means neglected us. They caused to 
descend upon the regiment on December 15th twenty-five 
oflficers from the Second Officers' Training Camps. The 
proportion of first lieutenants made at the second camps 
was greater than at the first. A number of our young second 
lieutenants had been recommended for promotion some 
time before, but when their commissions finally came 
through they were dated later than all the commissions 
given at the second camps. They, in other words, who 
had set their hands first to the tasks, had struggled with 
raw beginnings, had moulded regiments, were outranked 
by these youngsters fresh from three months at school. 
The amazing fact is mentioned in passing because it 
created a situation a trifle delicate and not without humor. 

It is simple to say : Here are captains and first lieuten- 
ants. Give them the authority and responsibility that 
goes with their rank. It is quite another to project in- 
stantaneously into their brains the necessary practical 
experience our officers, junior to them, had acquired during 
four hard months. 

The problem was solved by detailing temporarily these 
superiors as assistants to their veteran juniors. 

"Please do this and that. Captain," a second lieutenant 
would have to say. 

Or at retreat — to which the new ones, thirsty for things 
military, always turned out — a second lieutenant would 

47 



48 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

make his assignments, wondering what was wrong with the 
world. 

"Please take the first platoon, Captain." 

And he would distribute the other platoons in a dreamy 
way among the group of first lieutenants. 

"At ease!" or "Attention!" the shavetail would roar, 
and the silver-decorated shoulders would droop or straigh- 
ten obediently, but in the eyes above would appear inevi- 
tably a light of something out of the way. 

These were excess officers, so a rearrangement of quar- 
ters was necessary. No longer could every one have that 
little rough sanctuary so essential to concentrated study. 
The juniors were doubled up to give the new superiors 
each a room to himself. 

The majority of these officers were merely attached, and 
remained with the regiment, receiving valuable experience, 
only until its departure for France. 

During this period, however, we received a number of 
officers who did become a part of the organization. Second 
Lieutenant Ellsworth O. Strong came to us on December 
10th. First lieutenants Wilfred K. Dodworth and Paul 
G. Pennoyer reported on the 17th. Second lieutenant 
Edward F. Graham was assigned on the 20th, and First 
Lieutenant Albert R. Gurney on the 27th. 

Just before the Christmas holidays Captains Anderson 
Dana and Alvin Untermeyer were attached to the regi- 
ment. They had trained with the Second Battery at the 
First Plattsburg Camp, and had been held as instructors 
for the Second Camp. 

Except for a brief period Captain Dana remained with 
the regiment during the remainder of its history. He 
came, of course, as an old friend, since he had known and 
trained with most of the officers during their novitiate. 
A few days after his arrival the powers transferred him to 
the 306th F. A., but when Captain Devereux was promoted 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 49 



Taking Rtpuc'iNO- 
Exercises? 




Drawn by Musician Boyle, Hq. Co. 



and transferred to the 304th Captain Dana came back, 
definitely assigned to the command of Battery A. That 
change was made officially on February 4th. 

Until just before we sailed for France Captain Unter- 
meyer remained attached to the regiment as adjutant and 
acting commander of the First Battalion. 

After target practice our minds turned to the holidays. 
They were heralded by a series of lectures from British 
officers who had survived some of the bitterest fighting of 
the war. We heard at first hand of tanks, and machine 
guns, and gas, and discipline. We gathered from these few 
intimate talks more knowledge than a library of books and 
months of reading could have given us. They reminded 
us of what lay just ahead. They told us of the nasty ef- 
fects of phosgine and mustard gas, with which we were to 
have too close an acquaintance later on. From Colonel 
Appen's stirring talk on discipline we carried away an un- 
bendable belief that in discipline resided a defence almost 



50 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

as powerful as ordnance. We resolved to equip ourselves 
with that weapon. 

In spite of such grim reflections, the holiday spirit cap- 
tured us excessively. Or was it because of them? There 
was a strengthened pleasure, a trifle pathetic, in the holly 
wreaths and mistletoe and tinselled evergreens, of home. 
That classic tinkle, "For Christmas comes but once a 
year," was in our minds. What changes would pass be- 
fore another year should bring its unique feast? It was, 
roughly speaking, twelve months later that the regiment 
held its first memorial service in a sodden meadow of the 
Haut Marne. 

Paper Work was so chained that every officer and man, 
except just victims of discipline, could have either at 
Christmas or New Year, the period between Saturday 
morning and Tuesday night at home. Some fortunate 
ones got both holidays. 

The crazy specials pulled out of the terminal with eager 
youths overflowing to the platforms; and always fresh 
columns marched up, were inspected, and passed through 
the gates. At the Pennsylvania Station a civilian was a 
somber piece of driftwood in a restless, muddy sea. We 
gave all New York a brown tinge that Christmas. In 
clubs, hotels, on the streets, and in nearly everybody's 
home khaki was a perpetual reminder of war and of ap- 
proaching departures. 

When we returned we found that the few left behind had 
not gone cheerless. There had been turkey and mince 
pies, and the mess halls were still green and red from 
brave and abundant decorations. 

The return from New York New Year's night we put 
down without dissent as Horrors of War No. 2. They had 
had us out at fire drill Saturday morning and a few frozen 
ears and fingers had warned us that the frost king was after 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 51 

new honors. The journey up, through a lazy snow storm 
had been suffered patiently because of its warm destina- 
tion. But the mercury continued its ambitious ways, and 
it was always colder at night than by day. Towards 
midnight of New Year's, to any one standing on the 
platform at Jamaica, it was obvious that records had been 
broken. 

When the train finally came along, we crowded eagerly 
to get in. Then strong soldiers shrank from the open 
door. Hoarse voices called on regions of perpetual warmth. 
But the strongest and the hoarsest had no antidote for 
steel coaches, fresh from the yards, unheated, unlighted, 
save for a single candle in each, burning high, suggestive 
of a votive light in some Esquimau tomb. 

Compared with the atmosphere in these coaches we 
recalled the outside air as warm. We had to remain where 
we were, crouched on seats or in the aisle, our feet on suit- 
cases or on each other, while the train crawled, while we 
counted the minutes, while the air froze tighter. 

Gems of advice slipped from one to another. 

"Don't go to sleep, Edward. They says they never 
wake up." 

"Better try it. Be a dashed sight warmer where you'd 
go, Benny." 

"Move your legs, boy. Keep 'em moving. If you 
freezed in that position they couldn't get you out of the 
car till the spring thaws." 

"I heard that if you thought anything hard enough it 
would be so. I'm going to think I'm warm." 

"Tell that to the Baptists, George. I'm a Shaker." 

And that night because of these things, the railroad, too, 
suffered a little. In some cars the metal floor was dis- 
covered to be an excellent bed for a fire, and the wicker 
seats passable as fuel. The combination resulted in dis- 
cussion between Headquarters and the railroad barons. 



52 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Home from that moment receded. The bitter weather 
lasted, and there was a famine of coal in the land. These 
facts, added, probably, to our improvised heating arrange- 
ments, caused special trains practically to become extinct, 
and passes nearly so. 

The first warm weather brought a new complication. 
At best it had taken delicate handling to get an automo- 
bile, without prematurely aging it, in or out of Camp Up- 
ton. Spring altered rock-like dirt roads into unnavigable 
morasses. For a time the railroad was our only practical 
means of communication with the outside world. For- 
tunately the coal situation had improved then, and our 
erratic fires been forgiven. Specials ran again. The days 
of generous passes were revived. 

While the cold weather had cut into drill there had been 
plenty to busy us. More horses had arrived, and we had 
get another veterinarian, First Lieutenant John J. Essex, 
assigned on the 14th of January. Grooming occupied a 
lot of time, and care of harness and carriages a lot mora. 
The liaison schools worked so hard with theory and prac- 
tice during the cold days that a regular army inspector 
was lost in admiration to the point of saying : 

"Regular Army, National Army, or National Guard, 
I've never inspected details as well instructed as these." 

No matter how cold it was, unless snow or fog made the 
visibility bad. Colonel Doyle took the officers and por- 
tions of the details to the hill above the infantry pracLice 
trenches, where he instructed them in the Fort Riley 
method of conduct of fire. We fired problem after prob- 
lem from imaginary guns, while Lieutenant Hoyt, at the 
targets a mile or more away with erratic smoke bombs, 
made us feel how bad we were. 

In February Dame Rumor stole from her winter quar- 
ters. One day we were goixig to France on a moment's 
notice. The next, we would be lucky if we ever got there. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 53 

The third, our boat was in the harbor, and we'd have to 
hustle to get off. 

Some of the saner-minded weighed the matter. 

We couldn't fight the Huns with our one battery, our 
few horses, our insuflScient harness, our incomplete instru- 
ment equipment. Moreover, a number of our battery 
commanders were at Fort Sill for instruction. Others 
were scheduled to go. If proposed departures should be 
cancelled, and the absent captains recalled we would be- 
gin to put our affairs in order, for it was clear we couldn't 
go on marking time perpetually at Camp Upton. 

Washington's Birthday, in some measure, cleared the 
air. It fell on a Friday. We commenced to speculate 
when we were informed that on the holiday there would be a 
parade, and that night a monster Division ball in the 
armory of the Seventh Regiment, and that as many of us 
as possible would be given passes between Thursday even- 
ing and the following Monday's reveille. 

"Looks like a farewell show, and a last chance for a good 
visit home," sums up the commoner interpretation. 

This was strengthened when, as we struggled to town 
Thursday night, word passed through the train that the 
absent battery commanders bad been recalled. 

The parade was solemn. It had an exotic touch. Amer- 
ican soldiers had never looked quite like that before. The 
men wore their new winter caps instead of the familiar 
campaign hats. A blankety snow fell and became, ap- 
parently, a part of the uniform. The spectators gazed 
with a sort of wonder at city youths, broadened and ruddy 
and clear-eyed, and in a setting that placed them all at 
once, as it were, in a different world. 

It was almost entirely an infantry affair. In spite of 
the highly technical nature of our branch, our lack of 
equipment even at this late date, barred most of the artil- 
lery brigade from the column. Among the entire three 



54 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

regiments there were still only our four venerable rifles. 
The honor of parading these fell to Battery A, in command 
of Captain Dana. He was the first officer of the brigade 
to have a chance at entraining and detraining a battery. 
It spoiled his holiday, but it was good experience. 

The crowd cheered that single battery as it crunched 
through the snow past the reviewing stand, little Wing, 
the Chinaman, on one of the lead horses, pointing with 
unconscious pride the democratic, the universal power of 
our army. 

At the Division ball that night, somber with brown 
figures, and gay with the evening best of mothers, wives, 
sisters, and sweethearts, stalked an oppressive succession 
of hazards. What did it all mean to these cheerful brown 
figures and these smiling women who danced away the 
night together? 

Two days later, in the Cohan and Harris theater. Lieu- 
tenants Sage and Roesch staged a monster benefit for the 
regiment. Our own talent was supplemented by a glit- 
tering array of Broadway stars. The show made enough 
money to pay off the debts owed by the regiment to mem- 
bers who had gone into their own pockets to buy where 
the powers had failed to provide. 

On our return to camp we waited for the verifying word. 
It came on Tuesday morning. The acting division com- 
mander, an infantry brigadier, desired the presence of 
every officer that could possibly be spared from duty, in 
the Y. M. C. A. hall on Upton Boulevard. 

The non-commissioned officers ruled the regiment dur- 
ing that pregnant hour. 

A huge theatrical success wouldn't have filled the hall 
more uncomfortably. Infantry, artillery, machine gun- 
ners, medicos, the trains, they were all there. And this 
was not like previous gatherings for advice, or reproof. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 55 

Suspicious individuals stood at each entrance, scanning 
the arriving officers. Certainly we were going to hear 
secrets. The usual laughter, gossip, and calls to distant 
friends were replaced by a dreary and unnatural silence. 
It was as if we had aged unexpectedly. Curling towards 
the rafters was more than the customary smoke. 

The brigadier entered and faced us with countenance 
and attitude sterner than the ordinary. 

"Are there any enlisted men present?" 

Verily we were to hear secrets ! 

After we had heard everything we questioned if the en- 
listed men didn't know nearly, or quite as much, and we 
wondered why they shouldn't. For the discourse developed 
the fact that while we were sailing soon no definite date 
had been set. All we could do was to equip and train the 
new men we were going to get. In order that the enlisted 
men might be kept in African ignorance of these things, 
we were to tell them carefully there were rumors we might 
leave. 

The officers filed out, and wandered back to the regi- 
mental area chatting softly. In those first hours it seemed 
inevitable we should go almost at once. 

When organization commanders faced their men, they 
gathered that the men knew where they had gone, and 
why. A recital of the rumors seemed superfluous. For 
in the faces of the men, too, there was a solemn sense of 
imminence. 



VI 
THE AGES OF GETTING READY 

We failed to sail within a fortnight, or within several 
fortnights. Perhaps it was as well that transportation 
lacked, for there was much more preparation necessary 
than we had suspected. Lieutenant Walters left us, and 
Lieutenant McKenna came into his own. That is, he was 
assigned to the command of the Supply Company. Before 
many days his promotion to the rank of captain arrived. 
From constitutionally reluctant quartermasters he tore 
supplies with the same cheerful energy he had displayed in 
the days of recruit fitting. Yet the more we got the more 
we appeared to need, and lack of artillery harness was from 
the first like a too high hurdle between us and the docks. 

While McKenna hustled we entered two new phases. 
One might be labeled The Age of Gas, and the other The 
Age of Equipment Checking. Of the two in memory the 
second looms larger. 

"A complete check of personal property will be made 
bef oreTre treat . " 

Day after day that order faced us on the threshold of 
the afternoon. It meant the laying out on bunks of all 
issued equipment, according to an intricate pattern. It 
meant a review of every piece, checked against an official 
list of equipment C. Some day a Regular Army quarter- 
master may divulge to us the structural secrets of those 
lists. For our part, we never quite understood the logic 
of reversing, sometimes mutilating, the descriptions of 
familiar and intimate articles of clothing. 

56 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 57 

"Bags, barrack," it began. 

Why, in the name of abused commas, wouldn't "Barrack 
bags" have done as well? 

"Breeches, O. D.," "Socks, winter," "Gloves, riding," 
"Poles, tent," "Razors, safety," "Tags, indentification." 

It ran something like that, and so far we followed, if 
reservedly. We revolted only at: 

"Shirts, under," "Drawers, under." 

Perhaps an obsessed clerk, typing the copies, was re- 
sponsible for that. 

This is how one spent one's time in the age of equipment 
checking: 

In the somnolent barracks you arranged your equip- 
ment according to the intricate pattern. Everybody had 
a different idea as to some of the more esoteric details of 
the pattern, and you compared notes until you didn't 
know whether you would be passed, arrested for distor- 
tion, or praised for acute originality. Then you endeav- 
ored to keep awake. If you were an officer, you took 
your hsts, tried to get the cunning pattern through 
your head yourself, and wished to heaven you could smoke 
on the job. 

A non-commissioned officer slams into the sleepy room, 
singing out: 

"Attention!" 

The officer walks in. It probably isn't severity that 
gives his face that peculiar expression, you decide. It's 
more likely a stifled yawn. 

"Rest!" he croons. "All except this first man." 

He checks the articles on the cot. 

"Where," he demands, "is your fifth pair of socks?" 

The warrior blushes. 

"On me pusson, sir." 

The officer reflects. This time his frown isn't wholly 



58 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

concealed. The orders were absohite. Everything must 
be seen before being checked. 

The soldier stoops obediently, removing his legging, 
and probably murmuring in his mind : 

"I'm not trying to put anything over on you, and I'd 
wear them in the army whether it was my habit or not, 
because your issue shoes aren't exactly plush." 

"Where's your other O. D. shirt.? " 

The officer catches himself. 

"I mean. Shirt, O.D." 

Again the soldier displays emotion. 

" In the laundry, sir." 

Once more the officer reflects. It seems expensive, 
unjustifiable, and meat in the mouth of Paper Work to 
issue this man, and all the other cleanly men, masses of 
equipment to be turned back on the arrival of their laun- 
dry. On that point there should be something definite. 
He seeks the captain for a ruling. The responsibility is 
great. So the captain seeks the battalion adjutant. The 
battalion adjutant seeks the regimental adjutant. The 
regimental adjutant seeks the Colonel, and beyond that 
the chain is vague, but in a few days a ruling comes down 
that for the present equipment in the laundry may be 
considered as present and accounted for. 

The checking officer, meantime, makes out a painstaking 
little list for each soldier. 

"Private Doe has in laundry " 

The list is long. Those who hear it decide that Doe is 
effete. 

The conversation in the room, from tentative whispers 
following the officer's "Rest!", has developed into com- 
ments, exclamations, and arguments, centering about the 
flow of well-known raconteurs. The officer hears all this, 
grows at times a trifle absent-minded, has to make altera- 
tions in his neat lists. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 59 

"I pasted him in the jaw, honest to Gawd I did, and he 
didn't have no come-back. You saw the bout, Jim. If 
I hadn't caught my shoulder in the ropes, he'd never have 
knocked me out. Ain't it the truth, Jim?" 

"If you ask me," Jim rephes evenly, "I think you had 
horseshoes hung all over you to last as long as you did." 

Or, from a group of three serious-faced young men, two 
of whom have just returned from the third R. O. T. C. : 

"Germany's financial structure is as restless and inse- 
cure as a house built on sand." 

"That's logic, but logic and the truth are often bad 
friends." 

"Oh, Lord," groans the officer inwardly, making an- 
other mistake with his lists. 

And, to cap the climax and spoil an entire sheet : 

"Billy told me about it. If the Y. M. C. A. could have 
seen him then ! Nellie had him up to tea Sunday. Least 
he thought he was drinking tea. Looked like it. You 
know a Martini and tea are the same color. They put 
cocktails in his cup instead of tea, and he smacked his lips 
and drank four cups, and all the time the poor simp 
thought he was drinking tea." 

A deep voice cuts the air, snorting and booming: 

"The hell he did!" 

The sergeant tries not to grin. The officer swings 
passionately. 

"Attention! Sergeant, if another man speaks put his 
name down, and I'll take care of him later. At Ease ! " 

He turns back to his checking, aware that what he had 
wanted to say was: 

"Men! This job has got to be done. It hurts me 
more than it does you." 

Sometimes we checked and were checked at night, too. 
Whose fault was it, this ceaseless repetition that carried 



60 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

us each time only a trifling distance forward? In some 
measure, it must be admitted, the blame was our own. 
There were a number of men whom you could check at 
two o'clock and find, with the exception of allowable de- 
ficiencies, up to the mark. At three you might check 
them again, and learn they had lost within the hour such 
prominent objects as tent poles and shelter halves. One 
little bandsman was suspected of an appetite for tent pins, 
his disappeared so rapidly and regularly. But we weren't 
to blame for that futile effort after the complete check 
that could only be made with every soldier in his place and 
each piece of equipment in view. 

At one time the stable sergeants and the grooming and 
feeding details would be at the stables. Check or no 
check, the horses had to be cared for. At another the 
cooks were scattered on various duties. Naturally the 
men couldn't be checked at the price of starvation. And 
every day at headquarters and in the orderly rooms sol- 
diers of clerical ability bent before the sacred shrine of 
Paper Work, and couldn't be torn away. 

So the Age of Checking was prolonged through March 
and April, and even up to the day we sailed. 

The Age of Gas, while less irksome at that time, was 
rather more unpleasant. Lieutenant Mitchell had taken a 
course from a Scotch non-commissioned officer. He was 
looked upon as an expert now, and we were content to 
pin our faith to him. But one night we were summoned 
to hear Mitchell lecture. He sprinkled bright little stories 
among statistics, depressing, and, we fancied, a trifle exag- 
gerated for our good. We drank in extended figures of casual- 
ties caused through carelessness or ignorance; of casualties, 
on the other hand, scarcely to have been avoided. He 
had his house at his feet. In a fashion he beat the Eng- 
lish lecturers at their own game. He'd found out about 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 61 

some new gases that shriveled you up all at once or got 
you with a delayed and terrible kick long after exposure, 
and instead of a cheerful Christmas time just ahead, there 
was actually — gas. 

He asked us to listen to him again the next night, and 
when we obeyed we found a table piled with masks. He 
showed us how to put them on and take them off. We 
gasped in the strange, uncomfortable, stinking contriv- 
ances. We laughed — not uproariously, you understand 
— at our own appearance, abruptly converted into some- 
thing monstrous. 

Gas non-commissioned officers were appointed. The 
men spent a definite period at gas drill each day. They 
held competitions. They ran courses. They looked like 
types of a new race, born of some dreadful catastrophe. 

We were introduced to the gas house — a wooden shack 
near the machine-gun range. The Scotch sergeant was 
heard to say: 

"We got to ha' a wee bit o' luck this afternoon. We 
carried out thu-ree corpses this marnin', and they only 
allow me fower for a full day." 

"Laugh," Mitchell prompted in a stage whisper, "or 
you'll hurt his feelings." 

So we laughed, "Ha, ha, ha, " at his joke. It was more 
like a cry for help. 

A captain of the Medical Corps explained the proce- 
dure, for that was before the powers gave gas to the En- 
gineers. 

"I'm going to loose a killing mixture of chlorine," he 
ended, "so it would be as well to inspect masks carefully." 

We hoped he was trying to impress us, but the ranks, 
one noticed, took a long time over the inspection of face 
pieces and canisters. 

We were ready finally. The medico then put on his 
own mask, entered the shack, and sealed it. Through 



62 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

the single window we saw him turn the escape valve of a 
cylinder tank. He opened the door, stepped out, and 
removed his mask. 

"Come close," he said, "so you can smell the stuff. 
Then you'll know I'm not putting anything over on you." 

When we had obeyed our lungs refused to breathe the 
sickly air. We donned our masks and filed in. The door 
clanged shut behind us. We were imprisoned for ten 
minutes, half expectant of catastrophes. Through our 
goggles the air had a bluish appearance, but in our lungs 
it was pure. 

We escaped at last, relieved to be able to breathe nat- 
urally again and to know that the masks were really good. 
Afterwards we were treated to a lachrymatory mixture 
which hurt our eyes. After that we were permitted to 
march away, cracking grewsome jokes for the benefit of 
those whose ordeal still waited. 

We took gas in the stride of our work of preparation. 
That continued with slow sureness. Day after day Captain 
McKenna opened the regimental storehouse on newly- 
collected treasures, and each organization sent details to 
bring home its share. Then followed hours of fitting and 
issuing and checking again, until we realized that the regi- 
ment was nearly equipped. 

Each officer and man was given twenty-four hours at 
home to attend to his personal affairs. That brought it 
so much nearer. On March 18th a review and a dance 
of the Brigade was held in the 69th Regiment armory. It 
offered us from Saturday until Tuesday morning at home. 

"And this time it's surely so long, Mary," one heard 
going up on the train. 

There was, indeed, an atmosphere of climax about that 
affair. For March the weather was warm. Lexington 
Avenue and the side streets, as we came up, were nearly 
blocked by restless spectators. They lacked the air of a 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 63 

crowd at a parade. Their brief cheers touched formality. 
They were restrained. They vibrated with a quahty a 
little choked. Suddenly one realized that the men and 
women, unrecognizable in the night, were those that loved 
us. 

Automatically one recalled stories of the departures 
of regiments from New York for the Civil War. Always 
such pictures were set in sunshine, with a ring of quaint 
costumes and a brave show of flags and music. We had 
looked forward to something of the sort. 

There was music, all the more brassily insolent because 
its source was unseen; and, lost in the shadows, we knew 
our flags shook in the tepid air. The rest was wholly 
contrast. The columns, swinging up through the dark, 
pushed back the restless shapes. The door of the armory 
opened, and the shapes slipped through. They had to 
traverse a broad band of hght; and, as we looked, I think 
it came to all of us quite abruptly, that it was simpler to 
be of the offering than among those who tended the altar. 

On our return to Upton we entered the age of packing — 
a most comphcated and laborious epoch. Every day and 
until far in the night the mess halls resounded to a new 
activity. Battery carpenters hammered on packing 
cases. Painting details striped them with maroon and 
white, the division colors. Packing details filled them 
with instruments, and ordnance, quartermaster, signal, 
and engineer property — and paper work. From duplicate 
lists clerks checked everything in. Typewriters clattered 
on the tables. In one corner two men bent over, tap-tap- 
tapping numbers and names on identification disks like a 
new race of Nibelungs. In another an exchange had been 
established, and brisk bargaining over odd sizes of equip- 
ment imposed on the general pandemonium a shrill note 
of wheedling or invective. Such harness as we had was 



64 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

draped from uprights; and, depending from the ceiUng 
beams, were rows of blue barrack bags, still wet and 
splashed with white and red from the division markings. 

There followed black days of unpacking and repacking 
to meet some new trick order, while the checks continued. 

One Saturday a check of the harness disclosed the fact 
that two sets were missing from the regiment. The men 
were the more fortunate that time. The columns of pass 
holders marched down Fourth Avenue as usual. But an 
edict came from the Colonel that no officer, whatever his 
remoteness from harness, should leave Upton until the 
missing sets, or a reasonable explanation, had been found. 

By night the amateur detectives — and everyone had 
joined the quest — saw their last theories crumble. Every 
inch of the area, they swore, had been searched. No one 
had escaped a bitter third degree. The harness, to all 
appearances, had dissolved. We were released, but the 
shadow of the mystery long hung over us; and through 
the shadow, after a time, gossip stole. You may accept 
it or reject it, but it might be well to picture a couple of 
officers and a few men gathered in an orderly room. 
There's no point trying to identify that. Studying their 
faces, you might decide they gaze with horror on the 
result of some red and impulsive work their hands have 
just accomplished. That, or that the souvenir of some 
murderous indiscretion, has unexpectedly risen from the 
past to challenge their content. For their faces are not 
without horror — a helpless, desperate horror, and one does 
gasp: 

"Great Caesar's ghost!" 

But there's really no ghost, or any crimson relic — noth- 
ing exceptional at all in the plain little room except one 
perfectly good set of artillery harness. 

An officer flings his hands above his head in a gesture of 
despair. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 65 

"Surveyed! Finished with! Bunches of paper work 
on its grave ! Where in the name of kind heaven did you 
find it?" 

"In the stables, sir, covered up by accident in a man- 
ger " 

The desperate hands go higher. They now express 
also supplication. 

" It can't be found ! My God ! It can't be found ! " 

"You're right," one agrees, "because according to Army 
Regulations it has ceased to exist. To try to bring it to 
life again might take years of investigations, valuations, 
boards, I guess it would stop the war." 

"Probably, " says another, "it would put G. P., meaning 
general prisoner, on the backs of most of us." 

"Drather find nitro-glycerine." 

A murmur crystalizes the thoughts of all. 

"If it were done away with quietly, dispassionately, 
without cruelty?" 

You can't depend on this idle gossip, for the set was 
never heard of, at least publicly. One of the conspirators 
was seen in friendly converse with an officer of the Supply 
Company. Perhaps a stratagem was found. Maybe 
there's somethmg in the story after all. 

Days of doubt descended. For some time, each week 
end at home had been treasured as our last, but we didn't 
move. 

"An order has come from General Pershing," McKenna 
informed us, "that no artillery units are to sail without 
their full equipment of harness." 

But a word might alter that. If we could go without 
guns or caissons or horses — for gradually it had become 
clear our animals would be left behind — why all this fuss 
about harness? 

And the division was moving. 



66 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Headquarters stole out of camp one early April night. 

Not long after we were awakened by the shouts of many 
men and the wanton splintering of barrack window glass. 
The sky reflected many bonfires. Next morning the area 
of one of the infantry regiments was empty. Machine- 
gun battalions followed. Another infantry regiment. 
Each day we expected our orders. During this period of 
suspense several changes occurred. A special order from 
the War Department arrived giving Captain Untermyer 
an extended leave of absence. In his place arrived Cap- 
tain Henry Reed. He had received his commission at 
the First Niagara Training Camp, had instructed at the 
Second Camp, and during the winter and early spring had 
been just across the hill instructing at the Third Camp. 
He was assigned to the regiment as adjutant of the first 
battalion. Major Wanvig returned from Fort Sill. Lt. 
John W. Schelpert of the Dental Corps came to us on 
March 24th, and remained with the regiment until August 
19th when he was transferred to the Ammunition Train. 

Then the blow fell. A very high officer indeed was 
heard to say with a laugh at the Officer's House : 

"The artillery.? They won't get to France before ap- 
ples are ripe." 

And on top of that came the order that seemed to con- 
firm him. An infantry regiment that was moving at once 
was short of men. The artillery brigade would fill it up. 

By that time we had developed that organization spirit 
that is just as essential as it is delicate to breed. To take 
fifty or sixty men from each battery seemed a destruction 
of the greater part of all that we had worked to achieve. 
Men who had trained during seven months in the ways 
of artillery as a rule resented being transplanted all at 
once into a branch of the service to which they were 
strangers. Nor did their officers care to see them go. 

"Good men! Good men !" was the cry. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 67 

By that time, we believed, there weren't many that 
didn't fall in that class. But somehow the lists were made 
up, the victims equipped, the dazed exiles marched away 
to a new formula, to strange companions. 

It happened once more just before the last infantry 
regiment departed. As the result of those two orders, 
within a few days of our sailing for France as a combat 
regiment we had torn from us 698 men. The Headquar- 
ters Company lost 50, the Supply Company, 27; Battery 
A, 93; Battery B, 119; Battery C, 113; Battery D, 95; Bat- 
tery E, 116; Battery F, 82; the Medical Detachment, 2; and 
the Veterinary unit, 1. 

At Upton the artillery alone remained, and we stared 
with a sense of threading the mazes of an unpleasant dream 
at half filled mess halls and skeleton ranks. 

Troops began to pour in from the south. Upton, we 
heard, was to become an embarkation camp. Our area, 
however, would remain sacred to us. 

The vast German offensive of the spring of 1918 was 
dangerously under way. We could understand a stern 
need of infantry; yet, we argued, infantry in such a war 
isn't very valuable without supporting artillery. How 
could Europe furnish enough of that? 

"We won't move before July," was the general cry. 

Studying our shattered regiment, that was easy of belief. 

The changes — the incredible changes of army life ! 

Coming back from town on the night of April 14th you 
heard October as the most likely date of our departure, 
yet, as it turned out, that was to be our last Sunday home 
before sailing. 

On Monday morning the October guess continued good. 
A new smoke-bomb range had been designed and miles 
of wire laid. We were instructed to unpack a great deal 
of equipment. Elaborate schools were planned for the 
warm, favorable weather. 



68 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

On Tuesday whispers shpped apparently from nothing. 
On Wednesday the Supply Company awakened to a new 
activity. From it escaped the significant news that we 
would get harness at once. Nothing more was to be un- 
packed. All that we had taken out was to be put back 
again in the cases. 

"But," we objected, trying to stick to logic, "they 
wouldn't have stripped us this way. We can't go with- 
out men, and you can't take green men and train them on 
an ocean voyage." 

Can't you, though.? We were to find out about that. 
For on Thursday the officer in charge of arriving casuals 
conferred with us. From him we learned that trainloads 
of men from the West had been gathered at Camp Devens, 
and would come to us at once. We grasped at every com- 
fort. If these replacements were from the West they'd 
probably know something about horses. 

Selected officers and non-commissioned officers were 
awakened at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 19th. The 
trains were about to arrive. 

There was a chill in the air. A mist, pearl-colored 
about the lamps, veiled the dreary similarity of the bar- 
racks. 

The trains crawled in with a stealth harmonious with 
the secrecy of all these movements. The throbbing of 
the locomotives was discreet as if the mist sought to muffle 
it. 

Out of the cars they poured, sleepy-eyed, struggling in- 
eptly with barrack bags, not at all voluble as soldiers in 
groups usually are. Our old men lined them up with a 
gentleness designed to destroy their attitude of strangers, 
bashful and apprehensive. We counted them again and 
again to be sure we were getting all we were entitled to. 
We marched them off in groups through the fog. The fog 
seemed friendly to them, for at that time they were with- 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 69 

out personality to us — just so many things, counted and 
recounted, to fill the ranks of a regiment about to go to 
war. 

Taking up the march again, after a rest in which two 
groups had got a trifle mixed, an ofiicer counted his ob- 
jects and found one missing. He and his non-commis- 
sioned aides ran up and down through the mist. 

"I'm shy a man. Have you got an extra man? Count 
up." 

"What's he look like.'* Know his name?" 

"How the deuce could I? Doesn't make any difference. 
All I want's a man. Anything'll do." 

After many counts he was supplied, and the nameless 
things, taking up their barrack bags, stumbled on through 
the mist. 

It was four o'clock when we reached the area, but lights 
burned in the mess halls, and mess sergeants and battery 
clerks were about their tasks. The odor of coffee was 
prophetic. 

Each barrack swallowed its quota. The old men neg- 
lected the sleepy, haK-frightened expressions of the re- 
cruits to stare at the amazing variety of hat cords. Only 
on a very few hats did the red of the artillery show. On 
the rest were the colors of the infantry, the signal corps, 
even the medical corps. With sinking hearts we remem- 
bered how our artillerymen had gone to fill the ranks of 
the infantry. By what curious chances during those days 
did a man find himself here or there? By what devious 
contrivances was such a circle drawn? 

With so many men in them the mess halls were curiously 
silent. The drone of voices, reading service records or 
questioning, increased an atmosphere of somnolence. 
There was the familiar variety of names and accents and 
countenances. Most of these men were, in fact, from the 



70 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

West and many of them had had experience with horses. 
That would help. 

The mess sergeant placed steaming cans of coffee and 
tins of corn bread on the counter. His voice sang out 
cheerily : 

"Come and get it!" 

The inert and drowsy groups aroused themselves. A 
rough line was formed and passed stolidly by, each man 
taking his share without words. 

As they munched they stared at the bare walls and the 
pine tables and the windows beyond which the indifferent 
dawn illuminated a little through the mist the unfamiliar 
wastes of Upton. 

A sergeant cried with rough good humor: 

"We're not going to bite you. What's the matter.? 
Talk up! Haven't you got a song?" 

On some of the sleepy, grimy faces a grin struggled. 
There was no song, but sporadic conversations sprang up 
here and there and died away. 

One man's head rested on his arms which were stretched 
across a table. A snore disturbed the silence. Others 
followed with unequal effect. There was a laugh or two. 

In a corner a little fellow, bronzed from the western sun, 
sat before his untasted bread and coffee. He didn't laugh 
with the others. His expression altered. There grew 
about his mouth an uncontrollable twitching. For a 
moment we thought he was going to laugh, too. He be- 
gan silently and with difficulty to cry. 



VII 
GOOD-BYS AND THE SUBMARINE ZONE 

In retrospect those who got home may wonder at the 
quiet force of the regret that crowded those farewell hours. 
As that philospher of ours had said, "War is saying good- 
by." And good-bys are seldom easy. 

Since most of the regiment couldn't go to town, families 
came down; and wives, mothers, sweethearts don't speed 
their nearest on to battle with dry eyes. 

These final farewells were given as far as practicable a 
just proportion of the last rushed days. From morning to 
night the hostess houses were filled with women, soberly 
clothed, who knitted, and, for the most part, sat silently, 
glancing up each time a brown clad figure hurried in. 

Towards the end they learned the way to the barracks, 
and sat in noisy, cluttered mess halls. At each oppor- 
tunity their men would sit with them. One marveled 
at the lack of words. There seemed nothing left to say 
except good-by. 

At night in the dusk of the station this unnatural re- 
pression would be momentarily destroyed; shattered, as 
it were, by an unavoidable release of emotion too long 
subdued. 

Always the long trains filled slowly, for the passengers, 
as a rule, waited until the last minute, huddled in the 
pen-like enclosure beyond which soldiers might not pass. 
From it arose a perpetual monotone, like a wind in heavy 
pines — the last effort at repression, the farewells of those 
who only dared whisper. 

71 



72 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Guards and railroad oflBcials urged the unwiUing civil- 
ians. 

"See here, you've only got a minute! Want to miss 
the train?" 

Then almost always as the dark mass would begin to 
move, fighting back upon itself, the monotone would rise, 
as the wind in pine trees rises; and like a knife in the heart 
of the whispering stillness would flash a cry: 

"My boy, my boy! Oh, my boy!" 

The last good-bys weren't said until a few hours before 
our departure. 

On April 22d Lieut. Arthur A. Robinson was as- 
signed to the regiment from the Depot Brigade. He had 
been with us for a few days in December, coming down 
from the second Plattsburg Officers' Training Camp. The 
powers had taken him away almost at once, but there had 
lingered an impression of an exceptionally pleasant and 
efficient personality. When the regiment found itself 
a second lieutenant short at the very last, therefore, it got 
Robinson, and gave him for the time to the Headquarters 
Company. Lieutenant Robinson's career was unique in 
a number of ways. He was, as you shall see, the only 
officer in the brigade to be awarded the Distinguished 
Service Cross. He served with more organizations of 
the regiment than any other officer. As soon as we got to 
France he went from the Headquarters Company to Bat- 
tery E. After a few weeks Battery B got him. In the 
Lorraine sector Battery C was short and had to have a 
competent officer, so Robinson was shifted, and fought 
through the war as executive. McKenna got him for the 
Supply Company in the piping days after the armistice. 
Everybody wanted Robinson, and when he left us so 
tragically on the journey to the embarkation center there 
was a gap that couldn't possibly be filled. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 73 

Colonel Doyle and Captains Dana and Starbuck went 
to Hoboken on Tuesday, April 23d. Major Johnson 
returned from Fort Sill that day, and, in the colonel's 
absence, took command of the regiment. Under his 
friendly and easy guidance the task of getting off seemed 
simple. 

We were to leave at 2 o'clock on the morning of April 
25th. On Wednesday morning immediately after reveille 
the straw from the bed sacks was dumped in huge piles in 
the area and burned. The flames rose high above the 
buildings. Men, waving their empty white bed sacks, 
danced around the fires. The picture had a ceremonial 
air. Before long only ashes remained. 

We policed barracks and quarters. They were ready 
for the next to come, as empty as when we had first in- 
vaded them. We wandered about bare places, all at once 
unfamiliar to us. We were homeless. We had only to 
count the minutes while we reviewed details. At mid- 
night we had a supper of sandwiches, cakes, and coffee. 

Paper Work alone enjoyed himself, altering not at all his 
ways. In Regimental Headquarters the clerks still toiled. 

The organizations were formed on the parade ground, 
and each man placed his pack in his place, so that when 
the command to fall in for departure should come we could 
be off in a minute. The imaginative busied themselves 
with the manufacture of placards which they nailed to the 
barrack doors. 

"This house to rent. Owners spending the warm sea- 
son in France." 

"Good-by, Upton! Hello, Berlin!" 

"Wipe your feet. We're off to kiss the Kaiser, and 
can't do it for you." 

Out on the parade ground Pullen's bugle blared. The 
lights in Regimental Headquarters expired. Paper Work 
went to sleep for the night. 



74 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




Drawn by Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co. 
This map illustrates the travels of the regiment from its landing 
at Brest to its final billets at Malicorne 



"Fall in! Hustle it up there ! Squads right! March!" 
We moved off through the darkness, and turned to the 
left on Fourth Avenue. It was past belief. We were 
walking away from Upton. Feet shuffled as if trying to 
dissipate a dream. It was real. We were actually march- 
ing, and our destination was the front. 

There was a precision about that movement that au- 
gured well. We found our trains waiting at the railroad 
station. The column was divided and the proper number 
of men placed in each car without delay or confusion. 
Scarcely were we packed in when the trains started. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 75 

Through the dawn we approached Long Island City. 
The first green flashed from trees and bushes. We won- 
dered what the spring would be like in France. 

We were under strict orders not to open windows, not 
to call to people on the roads or at the stations, not to sing. 
Early passengers watched with a dumb curiosity these 
trainloads of soldiers silently gliding by. 

At Long Island City we crowded our way on ferry boats 
which took us around the battery to Hoboken. The city 
was scarcely awake. Only here and there did a man wave 
his hand carelessly from a park or a wharf. There was 
nothing glorious about it. We were only interested in 
what boat we would get. Wallowing up the North River 
we saw that a number of big ones were in harbor. We 
nosed towards Hoboken where the Northern Pacific and 
the Von Steuben, the old Kronprinz Wilhelm lay. The 
first battalion was destined for the one, and the second for 
the other. 

We poured off and formed in the odorous dusk of the 
pier. The place was crowded with a feverish activity. 
It was reminiscent of a factory — a huge factory, greedy 
for material, which it belched forth, after a moment, ready 
for the front. 

Red Cross men and women trundled little carts along 
the lines, offering us hot coffee, buns, and cigarettes. We 
ate greedily but we couldn't smoke, because it was for- 
bidden in the factory. 

While we munched. Paper Work awakened. But we 
had him well in hand. Our passenger lists were right, 
and so were our accommodation lists, our service records, 
and our inoculation cards. We were permitted to em- 
bark. We went up the gang plank in single file. We 
were counted off. We were assigned to space. And then 
they stopped bothering us for awhile. 

We examined our temporary home. Our hearts sank 



76 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

a bit. The bunks were in three tiers crowded close to- 
gether. There was an odor of disinfectants, of departed 
meals. The top bunks seemed safer on the whole. 

But we were fortunate. The Northern Pacific and Von 
Steuben were better than a good many other transports. 
And they were fast. Anyway there wasn't much grumbling. 
Whatever came it was a part of the game. Yet that day 
and the next were hard — more diflBcult than storms at 
sea or the conscious dodging of submarines. For during 
that period we lay at the pier, seeing the ferryboats go by, 
answering the fluttering handkerchiefs or the few cheers, 
and all the time, forbidden to step from the transport, 
we watched the smoke curling above our homes. 

We took refuge in our only antidote. We wrote letters, 
and signed safe arrival cards. These bore on the back the 
printed legend, which we were ordered not to alter : 

"I have arrived safely in Europe." 

Yet when those cards came through to be censored there 
were few that didn't carry something else — about love. It 
didn't do any harm. Probably the final censors thought so. 

Naval officers seemed to have lost their voices. We 
had no idea when we would cast off. And there was a 
strain about this waiting, chained within sight of home. 
At five o'clock on the afternoon of April 26th the strain 
broke. The fuel barges moved away. Men hauled in 
the gang planks. They commenced to cast oflf the moor- 
ings. The boat slipped into the river with only a discreet 
blowing of its whistle. 

Everyone was ordered below decks. No uniform showed 
outside except the blue of the navigators on the bridge, 
and the brown of the officer of the day dashing impor- 
tantly here and there. 

And the world outside seemed oddly indifferent. We 
crowded to port-holes and windows, hungry for a last 
glimpse. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 77 

At dusk the companionways were opened, and we 
chmbed to the decks. We were through the narrows. 
Ahead lay the gray, empty sea. Behind us, far in the dis- 
tance, resembhng details of a mirage, the towers of New 
York penetrated the haze, then were lost. 

The following seven days shared a drab, uncomfortable 
similarity. Aside from a half hour's sketchy physical 
exercise and abandon ship drills there was no effort to- 
wards concerted work. The limitations of shipboard de- 
creed that. 

Abandon ship drill was our most serious occupation. It 
began on Saturday. Everybody had a blue life jacket. We 
grew so accustomed to life jackets that they seemed a part 
of the uniform. They were light, and not uncomfortable. 
That was as well, for after the first four days, when we 
reached the danger zone, we wore them at all times. 
We were no longer, in fact, permitted to remove our cloth- 
ing at night. We slept in boots and breeches and blouses, 
with the blue life jacket over all. 

At first the drills fell at anticipated hours. We would 
get our belts and be ready when the bugle blustered. We 
received at once assignments to boats and rafts. There 
weren't very many boats, but there were a lot of rafts, 
so that the great majority of us examined the floats and 
the open lathe work between, and speculated on methods 
of launching, wishing we had been lucky enough to get 
boats. For the rafts would simply be flung overboard, 
and we would go down rope ladders and get on them as 
best we could. It looked hazardous, but we believed it 
could be done if we had a system. So we developed one 
and tried to account for everything. 

We resented the advice of a fortunate individual as- 
signed to a boat; and it wasn't merely a boat. It was the 
captain's gig. 



78 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

"It's well enough for you to talk," we said, "you're in 
a boat. You're lucky," 

Our hearts were full of envy. 

"I thought I was at first," he admitted, "but I'll swop 
with any of you. Somebody's reminded me of a thing 
I'd forgotten, and I'm trying to duck that boat." 

"What is it?" we asked. "You're crazy." 

"Oh, no. Not at all. You see the captain's the last 
man to leave the ship." 

No matter where you were, even at your appointed 
place, when the bugle cried for abandon ship drill you had 
to rush to your bunk and wait there in the dusky, close 
hold of the ship until the gong sent the long lines worming 
at double time up the companion ways and to the deck. 
It was a good deal to ask a man to leave the air and the 
sun, in an emergency, and to fight his way through narrow, 
insufficient passages to the stiffling hold; but we could see 
it was the most efficient way. 

As the days passed the drills became more ambitious. 
They came at unexpected moments — often in the middle 
of the night. 

"Shake it up there! Get to your place! Don't block 
that passage! Hay, Brown, where did you get the mo- 
lasses on your shoes?" 

And we were never quite sure whether it was a drill or 
a dangerous actuality. 

It was forbidden to talk at abandon ship drill. That 
was difficult, for sometimes it was nearly an hour before 
the recall blew. So men talked, and when they did 
strange punishments were invented. You might see a 
forlorn individual standing in ranks with a placard hung 
about his neck, informing all the world: 

"I talked at Abandon Ship Drill." 

Or another at the head of the companionway, singing 
out to the running lines : 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 79 

"I got to learn to hush up when it's orders," 

Over and over again, hke a man reciting some frantic 
Htany. 

The necessity of such precautions, and this severity, 
were clear to the dullest of us. Because of their speed the 
Northern Pacific and the Von Steuben had no convoy. 
They crossed side by side — two little specks in an endless 
waste of water. But there were places in that waste where 
it was necessary for us to go, and there submarines lurked. 
We would be picked up by destroyers only a day or so out 
of Brest. 

Sometimes the boats were so close together that with 
glasses we could recognize friends of the other battalion. 
One was tempted to shout across. And through this 
narrow lane one night, with the whole sea to accommodate 
him, a tramp blundered. There was something of the 
miraculous about that escape. We conducted abandon 
ship drill more earnestly. 

The crossing wasn't all abandon ship drill. The wea- 
ther occupied us quite a little. After the first two days 
the sea rose, and the boats showed us how they could roll. 
Familiar faces disappeared. By Tuesday there was a 
really high sea running, and preparation for morning in- 
spection of quarters became an ordeal. Instructions were 
to get every man on deck unless he was literally too ill to 
be moved. 

"What's the matter with this man.?" an ofiicer asks the 
first sergeant, peering into a clearly occupied bunk. 

"Says he isn't sea sick," the sergeant answers with a 
cruel sneer. 

"Not seasick. Blank?" the officer interrogates. 

Very weak but firm from the bunk: 

"No, sir, not a bit." 

"Then what's the matter with you?" 

"I think I got the —the — the grippe." 



80 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"Up then, and get where the air is fresh. It's what 
we're prescribing this morning for grippe." 

Thus caught, the invahd does get out, but not without 
leaving awful souvenirs of his prevarication. 

There were some, heaven knows, that didn't lie. 

"And why is this man still in bed?" 

"We can't move him, sir," the first sergeant says. 

"Feel better if he'd get up. Now what's the matter 
with you, Doe.'^" 

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" 

"Answer up. What's the matter with you?" 

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" 

"That's nonsense. Do you good to get on deck. Sea- 
sickness is all imagination." 

The officer looks around him quickly. His own words 
fail to comfort him. A lurch of the ship throws him 
against the bunk of pain. If he doesn't come up for air 
pretty soon himself his end is clear. 

"All imagination," he insists weakly. " Get out of here." 

With the aid of the first sergeant he gets Doe out. Doe 
sways, clutching at the air: 

"If," he moans, "I ever live to get to France, I'm going 
to stay there and become a frog." 

"Excuse me. Sergeant," says the officer vaguely, "Be 
right back. I've got to report " 

"AH imagination, did I understand the lieutenant to 
say?" grins the sergeant. 

But the officer hears, as he staggers up the ladder, the 
complaining voice of the invalid. 

"Honest, Sergeant, they wouldn't treat a dog so." 

"What you kicking about. Doe? Didn't you see the 
officer had all he could stand? " 

And last of all the invalid's voice, suddenly strength- 
ened; 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 81 

"You ain't foolin'? Honest, Sergeant? Ha, ha, ha! 
Damfi don't feel better." 

Tuesday was our day of greatest casualties, and wicked 
was the wit of the survivors. If the quarters were bad 
the mess hall made them seem very pleasant by compari- 
son. Men, as long as they could manage it, went there, 
because, except for a few crackers and such things at the 
commissary, it was the only place on the boat where they 
could get anything to eat. And somebody had started 
the abominable lie that eating is the best cure for seasick- 
ness. The food was good, too. Let that be put down. 

The mess hall was the old first class dining saloon. It 
was so far down that with any sea running at all no port 
holes could be opened. Here and there survived traces 
of its former luxurious decorations, but in place of mahog- 
any one gazed on deal mess tables, crowding each other. 
An ancient square piano was lashed to the end wall. By 
the main entrance were the tubs and cans of the cleaning 
detail. It is no wonder that the grease of one meal could- 
n't be cleaned from the mess kits for the next. For meals 
nearly overlapped each other. Organizations had to be 
fed in turn. In the corridors were processions of men, 
wondering if they could last until they got in, or if they 
could manage to get through if they did. And the odorous 
ghosts of many vanished meals pointed the transient na- 
ture of the one in progress. 

For one on the edge, the atmosphere inside was nearly 
unbreatheable. The floor was awash with greasy, coffee- 
colored water. Kitchen police in those days should have 
got citations. 

On that wildest night the old piano broke its lashings 
and went drunkenly fraternizing with the tables. It lost 
a leg and then permitted itself to be led back and tied up 
again. It furnished a humorous interlude that helped 



82 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

some men. They asked that it be allowed to perform 
every night. 

The guard and the soldier lookouts had to do their jobs, 
seasick or not. The Captain of the ship had offered a 
prize to any soldier who spotted a periscope. It kept the 
lookouts wide awake and it didn't do any harm to the 
flotsam and jetsam that were reported as periscopes. 
There were rumors every night that submarines had seen us. 

On Thursday evening, when we knew we were well 
within the danger zone the bugle called us to abandon ship 
drill. There was an element of strain present. The 
naval oflScers had looked glum all day. It was whispered 
that submarines had been reported near us, that we weren't 
far from the French coast, that our escort of torpedo 
boats ought to have picked us up that afternoon, and that 
the skipper was crowding the air with demands to know 
where they were. So a feeling grew that this wasn't a 
drill at all. Yet we all came tumbling down to the close 
hold, which was lighted only by an occasional blue globe. 
We stood attentively at the bunks. When the gong rang, 
we jumped up the stairs with no more than the prescribed 
hurry. While the last light faded over the water we 
waited patiently for whatever might follow. 

Both boats, one could see, were taking a zig-zag course. 
It strengthened the belief that there were submarines 
about. The minutes slipped by. The recall didn't come. 
The presence of submarines was accepted. One strained 
his ears for an explosion. From the bridges of the two 
ships signals flashed out. After a long time, when it was 
quite dark, the recall blew. The men gathered about the 
decks in whispering groups. No one regretted the ex- 
perience. It had shown that the crowded boats were at 
the pitch to behave just so if the thing should happen. 

That night, or early the next morning, a story went 
on the lips of the most conservative, that we had, towards 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 83 

midnight, actually run into a submarine nest, and that 
two torpedoes had been fired at the Northern Pacific, 
and one at the Von Steuben. Judging from the letters 
home it was accepted generally as a fact. 

We knew we should be in by Saturday, and everyone was 
glad. It was growing irksome to sleep with one's clothes 
on, to carry everywhere the blue life jacket, to stumble 
about at night in the insufficient green light, unable to 
read or play cards. 

Friday morning when we went on deck we saw five 
destroyers, low in the water, their sterns piled with depth 
bombs, their hulls and superstructures curiously camou- 
flaged. They chased about us as if in pursuit of each 
other, tearing along our sides, doubling about and dashing 
perilously beneath our bows or stern. They cheered 
everyone. The sun was unclouded. The sea had gone 
down. We commenced to pack. 

Early the next morning thick fog shrouded us. We 
were summoned to abandon ship drill — another business 
like call, and when we glanced at our compasses we saw 
that the boat had turned around, and that we were headed 
west. Was it a flight.'' We were not released from the 
stuffy hold until nearly noon, when the white pall thinned 
and we got back on our course. 

Because of this delay we didn't pick up land until after 
luncheon. There was no dramatic abruptness about our 
first glimpse. In the beginning there was just a shadow 
on the sea far in the south-east. Little by little it deep- 
ened and lifted itself above the water. 

Nearly without words we crowded the rails and watched 
the thing grow. 

Out of the somber, low cloud protruded details. Above 
it wavered a suggestion of green. It spread along the 
water, ceased to be nebulous, defined itself for us as a 
bold headland of Finisterre. 



84 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

France, we thought, where it's happened for four years, 
and flames now, waiting for us ! 

That was the reason for the nearly motionless silence 
along the decks, for the eyes fixed on each detail which 
seemed a little sacred. 

The outlines of trees and houses traced themselves be- 
fore us. We had left America just struggling from the 
sober cloak of winter. Spring had done all it would for 
France. The coast appeared abnormally green and gay. 

Aeroplanes whirred overhead. A dirigible, catching 
the sun like a placid planet, came to meet us, swung about, 
and escorted us in. The white and brown cliffs closed 
around us, like a welcoming embrace from the land. We 
felt ourselves drawn to a smiling serenity, a drowsy 
and remote content. Yet all the time we knew it was 
nature's masquerade. It changed nothing for us. We 
were in France, which for nearly four years had submitted 
to the scarlet and voluble shock of a perpetual disaster. 



VIII 

BREST, PONTANEZIN, AND THE CHEMIN 
DE FER 

Down in the throat of the harbor the houses of Brest 
detached themselves from the hillside. Small boats bore 
French officials and men in our own uniform to us. 

The Von Steuben anchored in the inner harbor. The 
Northern Pacific was warped against a stone pier. A 
few soldiers waved their hands at us. Here and there a 
French civilian stared, saluted, and passed on. We had 
come when the world waited in suspense between two 
phases of the great German offensive. It did not seem 
odd that we were welcomed as we had greeted France, 
with sensations that unconsciously avoided expression. 

Colonel Doyle had caused so much to be read to the 
regiment, under orders from G. H. Q., of precautions of 
one sort and another that many men expected to be in- 
vited ashore at once and introduced to all the gaieties of 
the city. Now it was announced that, except for the 
baggage details, no one would be allowed ashore. Glanc- 
ing back, the prisoners seem to have had something the 
better of it. 

The details, with packs, left the ship at dusk and 
marched through the railroad yards to an unpainted en- 
closure, crowded with long, low sheds. Our baggage 
would be brought from the ships in scows to the enclosure. 
We would sort it there and carry it to the sheds reserved 
for the 305th. We were told what to expect. 

"No man will be permitted to leave the yard. There's 

85 



86 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

nothing to do until the hghters begin dumping the bag- 
gage. Make yourselves comfortable." 

A friendly fellow who had been through the mill gave us 
a word of advice. 

"Sleep while you can." 

But where? How? We set watches and stretched out 
on the ground. There was nothing else to do, and it 
seemed particularly unpleasant and soiled ground. But 
at midnight the lighters commenced to dump their freight, 
and we didn't have to worry about getting to sleep after 
that. 

From then until the next night the details worked, sort- 
ing, checking, and wrangling with ambitious people from 
strange organizations. We got our barrack bags, trunks, 
bedding-rolls, and boxes of equipment piled in the sheds. 
Then the details were marched out of the dusty yard 
and back to the boats in time for supper and a bath. 

The rest of the regiment, meantime, had stretched its 
legs for two hours, doing a sort of Cook's tour of the town 
and its neighborhood. They had come close to the French 
and had been able to judge how much of young France 
was at war. They had set eyes for the first time on Hun 
prisoners marching under guard through the streets. 

We became aware at once of a distressing habit of 
French children. Three English words they all knew: 
Cigarette, Penny, and — Good-by. We never could under- 
stand why, when they probably meant "hello" they al- 
ways gave us a farewell. Or after so much war had even 
the children become fatalistic and a trifle cynical? It 
was not, we reahzed later, a local habit. Marching into 
some places it was a most depressing one. 

Cigarettes and pennies we gave them until the demand 
threatened our own supplies. At the close of that second 
night in Brest we were convinced, in spite of its nearly voice- 
ess welcome, that France was deeply grateful we had come. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 87 

No one seemed to know exactly what the immediate 
future held for us. After our seven months' training at 
Upton we realized we were far from fit for the line. It 
seemed certain that we would go to some training camp 
for a few weeks' instruction in the real things. We under 
stood that men were needed and that we would be sent up, 
as soon as possible. 

We were told that night that we would march the next 
morning to a camp four or five miles from Brest at a place 
called Pontanezin Barracks. It was, we were informed, 
known as a rest camp. That sounded enticing, and we 
were up early, and trooped off the boats, and marched up 
the long hill and into the open country. 

According to the information gathered by the soldiers 
nearly everything in France was built either by Caesar 
or Napoleon. Pontanezin went on Napoleon's score 
card. From a distance it was entirely picturesque. More 
intimately it developed white-washed buildings, like barns 
within, and arid, dusty courtyards. We congratulated 
ourselves when we learned the barracks were full, and that 
we would be quartered in tents in a pleasant grove to one 
side. 

The grove had the appearance, in fact, of a rest camp. 
As it turned out, the name was as perverted as "shirt, 
under." 

What with getting settled, posting guard, drawing ra- 
tions, setting up kitchens, preparing to police on the mor- 
row, accepting the omnipresent casual, and returning the 
same, it was dark before the regiment had time to breathe. 
Still the night loomed restfully. Then the night des- 
cended and brought new demands. Orders came. Bat- 
tery A would break camp at 4 : 30 a. m., because it was to 
travel with the 304th Field Artillery, and the brigade was 
moving at once. The rest of us would march back to 
Brest at 10:30 in the morning. Then we did have a desti- 



88 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

nation ! Some located it on the Swiss border. Others in 
something they called the forward training area. A third 
group spoke of the vicinity of Bordeaux. It carried off the 
laurels. We were bound for the Champ de Tir de Souge. 

Weary-eyed we turned our backs on our sylvan rest 
camp, and tramped to the Brest railroad station. It was 
here that most of the regiment saw for the first time the 
now familiar Hommes and Chevaux palace cars. The 
regiment that pulled out ahead of us had them. Our 
train was composed of third class carriages, and we laughed 
at the other fellows while we munched our luncheon of 
bread and corn willy in the railroad yards. 

"Those bullies are traveling like a lot of cattle," one 
heard. "We can sit up and play cards and look out of the 
window " 

Perfectly true, but after one experience you should hear 
how eagerly we would ask on the eve of another journey 
if we weren't going to have Hommes and Chevaux. 

"Sardine boxes are all right for sardines," was the ver- 
dict on third class carriages, loaded to capacity, after that 
first ride, "But they didn't give us any oil." 

It was seldom necessary to fill goods vans uncomfortably, 
and you could stretch out and go to sleep. In the third 
class carriages there were nearly always broken windows. 
In the goods van, if it got cold, you simply shut the door. 

That first trip, however, we piled in thankfully, and had 
our first doubt when we realized how little room there was 
for stowing equipment. 

A number of small boys from the summit of a neighbor- 
ing wall watched us entrain. Proudly they chanted for 
us that hap-hazard Marseillaise of the American soldier. 

"Hail! Hail! The gang's all here." 

And when the train started a little after two they fol- 
lowed us with the inevitable "good-by" which rose to a 
supplicating shriek. 



HISTORY, OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 89 

The placid and picturesque landscape of Finisterre and 
Brittany was a little unreal. Many of the regiment were 
seeing it for the first time. After the cramped voyage 
and the thorough rest at Pontanezin such a journey 
seemed like a holiday. We had been afraid of starvation, 
and had bought here and there. We found, therefore, 
that we had more than we really needed to eat, and at 
every station there were carts and stands loaded with fruit 
and cakes. We always descended to exercise what French 
we had or to acquire some. In return for cigarettes we 
get the beginnings of a vocabulary. 

France, clearly, wasn't starving, nor was it going 
thirsty. Wine was forbidden on the train. A guard was 
set at each stop with instructions to see that no one carried 
bottles aboard. He couldn't have eyes in the back of his 
head, however, and the French thought it very funny to 
help fool him. There was plenty of opportunity, for water 
was allowed, and the faucets marked "Eau Potable" were 
often at some distance from the train. There were us- 
ually vendors of stronger stuff about these places. Coming 
back, men's coats bulged oddly. As the train rolled on 
the shattering of glass now and then on the right of way 
was at least suggestive. 

If the stuff got aboard it didn't seem to do any damage. 
There was no disorder. The customary songs didn't in- 
crease in volume or expressiveness. 

We enjoyed the scenery, commenting on the quaint 
and calm costume of the Breton peasant, forgetting al- 
most that we were at war, until just at dark a peculiar and 
riotous alarm recalled us. 

Confused cries ran along the train, indistinguishable at 
first, but carrying a note of excessive tragedy. They rose. 
A pistol shot rang out. Another. A salvo. A bugle 
blared. 

We sprang to our feet and stared from the windows. 



90 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

The train bowled through a cutting. Heads leaned from 
every window. Nothing more unusual was visible. The 
racket continued, and out of it slipped words that could 
be grasped. 

"Stop the train! Stop the train!" 

The plausible explanation sprang at everyone. Some- 
one had fallen out. Back on the line must lie a still form. 
But a calmer mind reasoned. In time of war, its logic 
ran, troop trains, squeezed into schedules with difficulty, 
don't stop and block things for the carelessness of a single 
man. Such a catastrophe would be treated by sending 
back word from the next station. No, the calm reasoning 
went on, it must be something far more serious than that. 
We believed it when word came along that The Great 
wanted the train stopped. We could hit on only one ex- 
planation. The train must have broken in two. An 
express thundered behind us. We were, we learned later, 
to get out of its way at the next stop, a few miles ahead. 
The fate of that motionless string of cars, packed with, 
perhaps, half our companions, was terrible to contem- 
plate. So an officer and several men, crawled forward 
over a string of goods vans to the locomotive. The execu- 
tion to their clothing was appalling. But they persuaded 
the driver to stop the train, although he seemed in danger 
of a fit before he yielded, shouting things about the express 
that our amateur interpreters had difficulty with. They 
gestured rather more than he did and got their way. The 
train stopped. The engine driver animated himself volu- 
bly. He saw that the train had not broken in two. He 
sprang to the throttle, threw it open, dashed us into the 
station on a side track, and pointed to the express which 
roared in a little after us. 

Colonel Doyle, Majors Johnson and Wanvig, and the 
train interpreter hurried to the engine, while we waited to 
learn the truth. But there came the answer himself across 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 91 

the tracks — a wobbly soldier just descended from the 
express and supported by a medical orderly. 

There is, after all, a great deal of anti-climax about 
war. The present case failed to give us the thrill we had 
anticipated. It boiled down to indigestion, rather severe, 
still vulgarly gastric. It had struck the wobbly soldier 
at the previous station. Captain Parramore had instruc- 
ted one of the medical orderlies to take him from the train 
and care for him. The train had departed sooner than 
anyone had expected, leaving the sick man and his at- 
tendant. They hadn't worried because they were told 
they could catch us by the express. Captain Parramore 
had told the Colonel they had been left. After our pre- 
monitions we didn't miss a more dramatic denouement. 

Such incidents break the monotony of a journey. A 
different sort spelled variety the next morning. We 
rolled into Nantes about seven o'clock after a cramped 
night. We weren't surprised to learn we would be there 
until eight, for Nantes is a large city. A warm breakfast 
beckoned. Some of us snatched it in nearby cafes, and 
hurried back to the train which left without any particular 
warning at 7:50. Men scurried from every direction and 
scrambled through the open doors of the compartments. 
We made a hurried check. Everything was all right ex- 
cept that neither battalion had a commander or an ad- 
jutant. Majors Johnson and Wanvig and Captains Reed 
and Delanoy had breakfasted not wisely but too well. 
What the colonel thought about it we never heard. There 
was, this time, no effort made to hold the train for the 
missing, although their misfortune, too was vulgarly 
gastric. 

So we crossed the Loire and turned to the south through 
Les Roches Sur Yonne, La Rochelle, and Rochefort, where 
our missing officers rejoined us, grateful to the French for 
a travel order and convenient express trains. They looked 



92 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




IheCoOUIES hard at W0(2K.ATC«MP DE-Sou(iE/ 

Draion by Musician Boyle, Hq. Co. 

SO well shaved and comfortably fed that we gathered they 
wouldn't make any trouble for the railroad company about 
leaving them. 

At Saintes on the Charente, where we stopped at dusk, 
the war seemed to come closer. We all piled from the 
train and had hah an hour's brisk march through the 
picturesque little city. But it was the raihoad station 
that impressed us most. Permissionaires swarmed there 
in faded blue uniforms and battered helmets. Some were 
smiling and happy, talking with vivacity and wide ges- 
tures to civilians. Evidently they had just arrived. The 
soil of the front hne still stained their clothing. Others, 
far neater and encumbered with equipment, did not have 
much to say. Clearly enough their holiday was over. 
They were going back to the thing that waited for us. 

We tried to visualize ourselves within a few weeks at 
one with these men whose faces were bronzed and sadly 
wise. We tried to approximate their emotions. Our 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 93 

next train journey, we remembered, would be in their direc- 
tion. There was a fascination in standing close to them 
and wondering. 

After another cramped night the spires of Bordeaux 
greeted us across the vineyards of the Gironde, and at 
seven o'clock the train halted with a definite jerk at the 
railhead of Bonneau. 

Lt. Klots, who had come as our advance agent, met us 
and guided the tired column, bent beneath its packs, down 
a road that entered a pine wood. 

"It looks like Upton," we said. 

But these evergreens were larger, the sand was deeper, 
and at a crossroads was an estaminet with tables and 
chairs set on the edge of the road. 

It was only two miles to an arched gateway, sum- 
mounted by the republican cock and the legend; 

"Champ de Tir de Souge." 

Within we found endless rows of French barracks, 
painted brown. As we marched along the main avenue 
we noticed inscribed panels above the doors, reciting the 
valorous death of some oflScer or non-commissioned officer 
who had trained there. 

By noon assignments were made. Barrack bags and 
baggage had arrived. Except for the sand, we gathered, 
Souge would not be uncomfortable. We were vastly 
amused at hordes of French coolies, parading around 
beneath umbrellas against the sun, or languidly making a 
pretence at work. 



IX 

SOUGE AND FIRST CASUALTIES 

The coolies, we soon realized, would be an irritation, for 
we wouldn't be allowed to loaf here. We were to be put 
at once into the way of fulfilling our destiny. We were 
equipped first of all like the artillery regiment we were. 
Six batteries of soixante-quinzes were delivered to us in the 
spacious gun park. Sleek and lithe with an iron grace, 
they stuck their noses from their painted shields. They 
looked terribly competent, a little snobbish, too. They 
seemed to remind us that they weren't three inch guns, 
and that we had a lot to learn before we would really be fit 
to handle them. 

Limbers and caissons were of an unfamiliar pattern. 
We gathered about the gray fourgons — a cross between a 
gypsy van and a prairie schooner. They looked sturdy 
and faithful, and they turned out so. 

Telephones, switchboards, wire, wireless sets, gonio- 
meters, scissors — they all came streaming in. Except 
for horses we were fully equipped within the first few days, 
and the horses commenced to arrive and breed dissension 
almost at once. 

We didn't have much time to admire all this. We were 
put to work to learn something about it before we tried it 
on the Bosche. The course was announced as eight weeks 
long. After the first day we glanced at each other hope- 
lessly. What had they done with us at Upton for seven 
months? How could we absorb all this strange, fascinat- 
ing, and fundamental knowledge in a few days? 

94 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 95 

At first officers and men went to standing gun drill. The 
officers followed with terrain board work, the men with 
specialist instruction. The officers spent the rest of the 
day at general lectures on conduct of fire, orientation, 
communication, materiel. We were given elaborate range 
tables. We heard of stripping ranges and transport of 
fire, and D v zero, and K zero. Heads buzzed. 

"If I have to figure all these things before I shoot at 
the Bosche," someone said, "the war will be over before 
I get my first shell off." 

The sun grew hot and the sand more clinging, reminding 
us we were in the south, as we trudged to classes or walked 
many kilometers with plane tables and instruments for 
orientation exercises. 

During this period of education the regiment more or 
less ran itself. Officers and men went to different classes. 
The hours didn't coincide. Often for drill there would be 
no officer present. Yet the work didn't slump. Disci- 
pline maintained its old standard. 

We were the first national army division in France, so 
our instructors had been drawn from the few Regular 
Army and National Guard Divisions that had preceded us. 
They had had some little experience in what might be 
called parlor trench fighting. We grasped at it. It was 
invaluable to us. We tried to emulate their easy com- 
mand of the finer points of French artillery specialization. 

Frequently we got to Bordeaux for a week end relaxa- 
tion. The neighboring villages of Martignas and St, Jean 
d'lllac oflPered a smiling hospitality. For less adventurous 
spirits there was a collection of booths just outside the 
gate, where one could sample French cookery and wines. 
Then during the second week measles appeared, and for a 
time all passes were stopped. 

We had solved the mechanical puzzles of the soixante- 
quinze, and something of the mysteries of orientation and 



96 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

modern conduct of fire. On May 27th we went to the 
range to shoot. There were just enough horses at that 
time to draw one battery out, and the second battaUon 
got them for E battery, which had won the gun drill com- 
petition and had been selected to fire with C the first shots 
on the range. 

C battery tried trucks. They got the pieces and cais- 
sons as far as the macadamized road went. There re- 
mained, perhaps a mile and a half of sand. The trucks 
wouldn't touch it. The cannoneers looked at the deep 
ruts and the heavy pieces. 

"We have been honored with this first job to fire," they 
said to each other. 

They put their shoulders to the wheels. They kept 
talking about that honor. They wondered why they had 
ever gone into the artillery to be so appreciatively singled 
out. They managed, however, a little limp themselves, 
to get the carriages to the position in front of observatory 
3, where others had dug emplacements and sunk trail logs. 
The details located the guns, got the aiming sticks up, and 
ran wires to the observatory and into the range telephone 
system. 

Captain Roger D. Swaim, of the New England National 
Guard was the First Battalion's firing instructor, and 
Capt. Kelly, of the same organization, the Second's. They 
met us at the observatories at 7:30 Monday morning, and 
we started. 

We had so much ammunition that we forgot to gaze at 
each shell as if it were a precious pearl being cast before 
swine. 

The projectiles went away in quick salvos, and after the 
first few we knew that while we weren't perfect we could 
bracket a target and get real effect on it. Then the in- 
structors criticized, the colonel did the same, and the majors 
usually had their say. Those who hadn't fired looked 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 97 

at the man conducting smugly. Yet always sooner or 
later they got, as one phrases it, theirs. 

That was the begining of endless hours in the observa- 
tories. We averaged four hours firing and eight hundred 
rounds a day. 

Our first day on the range, it will be recalled, saw the 
opening of the great German offensive across the Chemin 
des Dames, through Chateau Thierry, and nearly to the 
gates of Paris. After the thrust at Amiens and about 
Ypres the Bosche had lain quiescent, and his startling 
initial successes carried a vivid shock to us in the midst 
of our schooling. We guessed our plans would be altered, 
for more artillery was needed. A cry went up for every 
available man. Yet the change when it came was no less 
of a shock than the great battle. The schedule was pub- 
lished at the end of the week. We would start on the 
range at 7 o'clock. We would get back in time for a hur- 
ried bite of luncheon. From then until 5 o'clock we would 
have terrain board and specialist instruction, and gas 
would have to be worked in now. It went between 5 
o'clock and supper. From supper time until nine o'clock we 
would listen to lectures on ammunition, fuses, and various 
subjects. Then, if we liked, we could attend to our rout- 
ine organization work, and study. Then, if there was any 
time, we could go to sleep. 

The emergency was, indeed, grave. We even heard 
rumors that the government had moved from Paris to 
Bordeaux a second time, and we went into town that week 
end apprehensive of too many figures in frock coats and 
silk hats. 

After a few days the news was better, but it didn't 
affect our schedule. During the afternoon classes, after 
nights of insufficient rest and mornings of intricate cal- 
culations and eye strain on the range, we struggled against 
sleep. 



98 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson returned to the regiment 
during this phase. He had visited several fronts and had 
taken the course at the staff college at Langres. 

Lieutenant Mitchell, in spite of his experience, was not 
named regimental gas oj95cer. That position went to Lieu- 
tenant Gilbert Thirkield. Our gas drill consisted in ex- 
ercises in speed, and walks or runs, wearing the masks. 
We tried to accustom ourselves to goggles that always 
clouded, to mouthpieces that left us a trifle choked, 
to head bands that exerted a painful and increasing pres- 
sure. 

Into the midst of this earnest endeavor the horses came, 
and time had to be found to take care of them and to 
wrangle over them. They weren't very good horses, but 
they served to arouse that passionate gypsy instinct that 
informs all lovers of animals. There was sharp trading 
and devious scheming to get the best of each lot. 

A new batch would arrive from the remount depot. It 
couldn't be assigned to one organization without giving 
the others a fair chance for its best. An order would 
come around that organization commanders might ex- 
change the choice of their individual mounts for anything 
that caught their fancy in the new lot. The horse fair 
would begin. 

This fair was usually held in the deep sand by the sta- 
bles. Officers and men would form a ring about a row of 
shaggy beasts held by self-conscious orderlies. Critical 
eyes would run down the line, taking in the badly used 
thoroughbred, a thing of possibilities; the narrow-chested 
overbreed; the useful animal of poor but honest ancestry; 
the pitiful crocks. Arguments would spring up as to the 
virtues of some particular beast. You invariably weighed 
the reverse of an expressed opinion. Faces would grow 
red, and voices hoarse from reiterated convictions. 

"I'll swop for this one," a captain says. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 99 

"All right," from the officer in charge of the fair. "Bring 
on your best mount." 

The captain strides away. After a time the circle parts 
to admit him and his prize — a spring-kneed, mangy cob 
from the hospital. It takes two orderlies to support it. 

"Whoa!" cries the captain, and pats him gently as if to 
persuade him not to cut up. 

He points to the new horse he has chosen, and instructs 
his orderly. 

"Lead that fellow out. I think I'm getting stung, but 
I agreed to swop, and I will." 

The orderly leaves the invalid, glancing back as if to 
make sure he hasn't toppled over. The other side of the 
exchange raises his voice. 

"Like the deuce you'll swop. What did you bring that 
hat-rack here ior?" 

The captain's expression is of innocent surprise. 

"To trade with you as the order directed." 

The other sneers. 

"Thought you'd made a mistake and believed I was 
running a soap factory, or maybe you want to borrow a 
detail to dig his grave." 

"Very funny! Very funny! That's one of the best 
horses in the regiment." 

The orderly puts in gravely: 

"It's a real hardship to see him go, sir. He's just a 
little sick." 

"My interpretation of the order," the objector says, 
"is that you can trade your best individual mount. If 
that's it, your battery will walk." 

The captain gestures. 

"Orders are orders. You've got to trade." 

A very superior officer intervenes. 

"Gentlemen! — Or maybe I ought to say gyspsies — We 
can't do business this way. We'll get an interpretation 



100 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

that will give everyone a square deal. Meantime, put 
the horses up." 

And the red disappears from the faces of the wranglers, 
and they go away arm in arm, good friends until the next 
fair day. 

Sharp trading was necessary. Not only were many of 
the horses bad, but they died in large numbers, and re- 
placements weren't simple to get. 

Major Johnson was largely instrumental in holding 
casualties down and in conditioning the survivors. He 
was also a bulwark between us and the gypsy desires of 
other organizations. For the horse trade fever swept the 
entire brigade. 

"I thought they might court martial me to-day," he 
would say after an hour or two at the stables or brigade 
headquarters with higher ranking officers than himself, 
"but I've held them off our horses." 

The remount men watched the bargaining and smiled. 
They had their own axe to grind, and they liked to see a 
favorite animal well placed. They were capable of di- 
plomacy when officers of higher rank than the one chosen 
threatened to interfere. 

" Sure. A beautiful horse, sir," the remount man might 
say to the very high ranking officer. Few better in looks 
have come out of the depot. You might go farther and 
fare worse." 

He winks at the junior officer for whom that horse is 
destined. The senior glances up. 

" What do you mean ? What's the matter with him ? " 

"Matter! Who said anything was the matter.'' Of 
course, sir, all horses have their little foibles." 

"I thought so. Talk up. What's the matter with this 
one.?" 

The remount man gazes at him admiringly. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 101 

"No fooling you, sir! But I don't go back on what I 
said. A beautiful animal, and he might give you good 
service if you took chances and had a little luck. I go on 
the principle that no horse is hopeless, but this one is a 
genuine bad actor." 

Exit high ranking officer. 

We had practical uses for our horses now. Some of the 
gun positions and observatories were five kilometers or so 
from our quarters. It often took hard riding to snare a 
bite of luncheon before the first of the afternoon classes. 

Lieutenants Hoyt, Montague, Gurney, and Church, who 
had been delayed in America to bring over casuals, joined 
us early in June. Shortly afterwards Lieutenants Hoyt 
and Norman Thirkield were sent to balloon school, and 
Lieutenants Jones, Montague, and Gurney to aviation in- 
struction. Lieutenant Hoyt soon after was ordered by 
G. H. Q, to the liaison service, and the regiment said 
good-by to him regretfully. 

We had got into lateral and bi-lateral observation by 
this time. Often the guns were several miles from the 
officer conducting fire, but communication was always 
open, and the result of these exercises plainly told us that 
we were nearly ready for the Hun. Before this war it 
would have been considered an absurdity to try to train 
an artilleryman even in the old fashioned methods during 
so brief a period. But here we were — good. The regi- 
ment felt it. A little later, the Hun felt it, too. 

Our fijst casualties came to us on the range at Souge. 
It was on June 20 — ^We were registering for an intensive 
barrage that would mark the close of the course. 

The two battalions had established command posts at 
some distance from each other. Each had put in elabo- 
rate schemes of communication, practically independent 
of the range system. Major Johnson had received per- 



102 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

mission to locate the pieces of the first battahon according 
to the technique of actual warfare. He got camouflage 
nets which, with the natural cover, hid the positions so 
successfully that an aeroplane photograph, taken for our 
instruction, was innocent of warlike indications. 

The first platoon of Battery B was scarcely more than 
fifty meters from Major Johnson's command post, Ob- 
servatory 1. The pieces were echeloned, each under its 
own camouflage net. 

The registration progressed, as registrations do, to a 
precise and dreary measure. Without warning and with 
no unusual noise Battery B's number 2 piece was shat- 
tered by a premature burst. For a moment a cloud of 
smoke obscured it. As it drifted away we saw that the 
camouflage net had disappeared, that the caisson was 
blackened and smouldering, that the breech of the piece 
had gone. The crew, from an ordered group, had become 
a thing, scattered and incomplete. Men stumbled oddly 
as they ran out of the cloud. There were not enough of 
them. 

"Cease firing!" Major Johnson ordered. "Where's 
the surgeon?" 

The operator passed the word over the telephone. 
Flames sprang from the smouldering caisson. Shells 
there were evidently bursting. Major Johnson ordered 
everyone from the observatory, and, followed by his ad- 
jutant. Captain Reed, and Captain Ravenel walked for- 
ward and threw sand at the caisson. Unasked, volunteers 
sprang from the ranks into the danger zone. In a few 
minutes the fire was extinguished. Those on the out- 
skirts questioned. 

"How much damage? Anybody hurt? " 

And from the group about the smashed piece came back 
the quiet answer: 

"The gunner and No. 1 killed." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 103 

Everyone had guessed that would be so. Sitting on 
either side of the breech there had never been much chance 
for them. 

The director of the school came. A board was appointed 
and the evidence taken. We had learned to fear long 
fuses, but the damage had been done by a white fused 
shell, and No. 2 had looked through the bore, so that the 
blanket verdict of faulty ammunition went down. 

An ambulance dashed up and backed towards the group. 
Two covered forms were lifted into it, then it clanged a 
swift way towards camp. 

" Brace up ! " an officer called with kind brutality. "You- 
'll see plenty of other men killed before you get through 
with this war. Get on the job now. Firing will be re- 
sumed." 

The men responded, shaking themselves rather as dogs 
do after an unexpected immersion. That afternoon there 
was a new piece firing from the destroyed gun's platform. 
The gunner and No 1 did not flinch. The day's work 
went on with a noisy rapidity. 

"Yet," as someone wisely remarked, "it can't be like 
seeing men killed in battle." 

Privates Jeremiah S. Lynch and Harry J. Posner were 
buried the next day. Chaplain Sheridan conducted the 
services, and Mrs. Gariessen, of the Y. M. C. A., who had 
a short time before lost her own son in action, tried as best 
she could to take the place of the mothers. Lynch and 
Posner received full military honors. Men from every 
organization attended the funeral and saw more distinctly 
in the bland southern sunlight the vicious and amazing 
shadow that is war. 



X 

HUSTLED TO THE FRONT 

The regiment went about its business with its former 
eagerness. We were told that our first roUing barrage 
was worthy of veteran troops. It certainly made enough 
noise and black smoke. The next, with the guns of the 
two light regiments in a long row, was as good. We ad- 
mired the dust clouds half obscuring the quickly sliding 
tubes, and the changing black curtain drawn across the 
range. 

"No one," we told ourselves, "could get through that." 

Our instructors admitted that there didn't seem to be 
any holes. 

Such perfection wasn't reached without delays and ad- 
ventures. The weather had grown steadily warmer. 
There had been scarcely any rain. Consequently the 
range was abnormally dry. When the 306th got its 155 
howitzers and opened fire with practice shells these factors 
produced worse conflagrations than we had had at Upton. 
They stopped our work. They sent us to warm and un- 
congenial labor. Towards the climax of a delicate ad- 
justment it was distracting to hear someone say to the 
instructor : 

"Isn't that smoke over there sir.'' I think it's a fire on 
the range." 

The instructor always looked through the binoculars, 
and nearly always in a tone of helpless disgust, called to 
the operator. 

"Cease firing! Fire on the range." 

104 




Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D 
'The Battle Roar Would Die Before a Threatening Silence" 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 105 

The battle roar would die before a threatening silence. 

We never learned. We always hoped until the last 
minute that the flames would burn themselves out. But 
always the small smoke ball with its red center would 
grow, and spring into a black fan with a flame fringe, 
sweeping before the wind which always blew in that place. 

Then the colonel, or the brigade commander, if he was 
there, would call for trucks and men until the greater part 
of the brigade and the ammunition train was on the range, 
starting counter flres, or with picks and shovels clearing 
ground before the flames. 

It usually meant an afternoon's hot work at the expense 
of specialist instruction. That had about run its course 
anyway. The days had slipped into weeks, and towards 
the end of June we knew we were as nearly ready as Souge 
would make us. Our departure waited only on transpor- 
tation. We speculated as to where we would go. Our 
infantry had trained with the British in Flanders. For a 
long time we thought we would fight there. 

Tours wanted to know which regiment would volunteer 
to hold itself ready to move at a moment's notice. The 
305th offered itself. We entered a new age of packing. We 
had more equipment, but we also had more experience, and 
we got ready with little of the neurasthenic hurry of Upton. 

Here at the last, our carefully studied organization was 
shattered. Other artillery brigades were coming to France, 
and they would have to be instructed. Under orders from 
the Chief of Artillery the Souge instructors chose from the 
brigade a certain number of officers who, they considered, 
had shown aptitude. They would either remain behind 
now, or be called on later to teach artillery. 

We felt our regiment had been unduly complimented. 
Captains Reed, Delanoy, and Ravenel were to leave us at 
once. Lieutenants Camp, Church, and Fenn might be 
called from their organizations at any time. 



106 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson went to G. H. Q., hoping 
to accomplish the release of the three captains. 

Lieutenant Camp was made acting adjutant of the First 
Battalion, and Lieutenant Fenn of the Second. Lieu- 
tenant Montgomery took command of Battery B. Captain 
Fox had some time before been made personnel adjutant, 
so Lieutenant Kane was the commanding officer of Battery 
C. With these radical changes made we were ready to go 
into action. 

From day to day we waited for word from Tours that 
our transportation was ready. The Fourth of July was 
near. The general commanding the base section wished 
the brigade, if it had not moved by the holiday, to take 
part in a monster parade in Bordeaux. That ceremony 
kept us on the anxious seat for a number of days. In the 
morning the parade would be a certainty. After luncheon 
there wasn't a chance that we would make it. The next 
morning there was no question. We would make it. It 
wasn't until July 3d that we knew, and then we were told 
that we would leave, mounted, immediately after luncheon, 
camp at a race course outside Bordeaux, march in the next 
morning, parade, and come all the way back before night. 
On July 5th the regiment would start entraining. 

It looked like a difficult programme. Our drivers had 
had very little road work. The regiment had never be- 
fore been mounted as a whole. We were afraid of our 
horses. Could they do it? Was it wise to make them do 
it, when they would have to stand immediately afterwards 
for three days in box cars? 

Just before we left. Major Johnson's promotion to the 
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel came through. It cast an- 
other shadow, because we knew the powers wouldn't let 
us have two lieutenant-colonels. 

After luncheon the regiment gathered in the gun park. 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 107 

The teams were brought from the stables, protesting at 
the unusual exercise. The drivers reproved them with 
harsh voices. A fog of dust arose and settled over the 
place. Through it you caught glimpses of prancing horses, 
struggling men, yellow harness. Out of it came a chorus 
of commands, entreaties, threats. Guidons flashed red, 
like a gleam of sunlight through the rolling mist. The 
sunlight grew. The mists rolled away. Wheels, swings, 
and leads stood in their places. Behind them the yellow 
and black carriages rested expectant. 

"Prepare to Mount! Mount!" 

Drivers sprang to their saddles. The leading battery 
moved out. The others followed. Leaving camp, the 
column may have twisted a little, and wheels may have 
slipped into the sand on either side of the avenue, but the 
column kept growing, until from the park it stretched into 
a string incredibly long and business like and military. 

Road discipline came to us, as it were, instinctively. 
There were no stragglers. Drivers mounted and dis- 
mounted precisely at every halt. We took a narrow 
country road, and on a curving hill — as difficult a place as 
you could choose — met a supply train coming up. We got 
our carriages into the ditches. We wormed by. Noth- 
ing upset. On the jammed roads at the front we found 
nothing much more puzzling. We commenced right there 
to take a pride in the regiment mounted. Self-satisfied 
we listened to the heavy rumbling of the carriages. We 
glanced back from every turn at the struggling horses, the 
sleek pieces, the caissons, low and awkward. The whole 
had an appearance of grotesque beauty. 

The Stad Bordelaix was green and trimmed, like a huge 
formal garden. We camped by the steeple chase course. 
We parked, and pitched tents, then for the first time faced 
the problem of watering on the march. We found the 
familiar lack of facilities, the accustomed waste of time 



108 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

in going long distances with a few horses. But it was ex- 
perience that we needed, and we saw it was a good thing 
we should have come. 

A few fortunate ones got passes for Bordeaux. The 
rest, after mess, lay about in fresh-cut hay, and tried to 
realize it was their last experience in the S. O. S. 

The next morning our apprehension vanished. The 
First Battalion took one road to town the Second another. 

"We'll rendezvous all right," the commanders said 
confidently. 

They did, moreover, in spite of the apparent confusion 
in the city. Every element fell into its own place in the 
column. The parade started. 

Bordeaux gave us a gracious welcome. Masses of citi- 
zens threw flowers and confetti from bunting-hung build- 
ings. They liked the looks of the American artillery, 
equipped with their own soixante-quinzes. They were glad 
to see the Americans. Turning into the Place de la Come- 
diae the band blared out the "Sambre et Meuse." The 
closely packed mass of the French burst into cheers, flung 
hats into the air, madly waved banners. 

A tribune had been erected in the Grande Place. Local 
celebrities stood there, and French and American generals. 
Opposite was a line of veterans, some with missing limbs. 
They held flags, decorated with the names of breathless 
battles. These they dipped, and our bright new colors 
bobbed back. 

It did us good. It painted our work for the first time 
with sentiment. It was our first touch of the spectacular 
side of things military. That has the thrill that war lacks. 

We paid a small price. Only one piece was put out by 
unmanageable horses. Only one man on that piece was 
hurt. Only one was thrown from his horse, and that was 
Dr. Parramore, tearing back to attend the victim of the 
accident. The crowd was interested. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 109 

Regimental Headquarters and organization command- 
ers hurried by automobile back to Souge immediately 
after the parade to prepare for the movement to the front. 

The regiment, in command of Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, 
returned to the Stad Bordelaix, watered, fed, and messed, 
and afterwards made the long march back to camp. 

We had one lesson that impressed on us the necessity of 
close liaison even in the smallest column. At a crossroads 
another regiment cut our line of march, and the Second 
Battalion followed in its wake. There was a good deal 
of time and energy lost in finding the three batteries, turn- 
ing them around, and getting them back in line. 

We pulled into Souge at dusk, tired, dirty, and with a 
lot of grooming and rubbing before us, but on the whole 
triumphant. 

The next day the movement commenced. The Head- 
quarters Company left the rail head at Bonneau, where 
less than two months before we had detrained, uninstructed 
and unequipped. 

Nearly everyone, it might be said, thought that we 
would be billeted behind the lines for several weeks of the 
road work we so much needed. That took a little of the 
seriousness from the journey. 

Regimental Headquarters and the Supply Company left 
the afternoon of the sixth, and First Battalion Headquar- 
ters and Battery A that same evening. During the next 
three days the other batteries pulled out, while the 304th 
and 306th waited their turn. 

We said good-by to Captains Reed, Ravenel, and De- 
lanoy without knowing when we would see them again. 

Entraining a battery mounted was a new experience 
for all our captains except Dana. The entire regiment 
had arrived in one train. Now each organization had a 
train to itself, and was forced to crowd a little to get every- 
thing on. 






110 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

These artillery trains were all of a pattern. There were 
the Hommes and Chevaux for animals and men, a com- 
bination first and second class coach for officers, and a 
string of flats for the carriages. 

At Bonneau there was a loading platform. In some 
places we found none, and used instead clumsy move- 
able ramps. Yet methods varied little. With practice 
we got some of the skill of circus men. The different 
tasks proceeded simultaneously. An incoherence seemed 
to prevail. Then all at once the groups would scatter, 
and you would see that the job had been done, that the 
train was either loaded or unloaded. 

None of our organizations needed the three hours al- 
lowed them for entraining at Bonneau. The carriages 
were little trouble. Squads ran them from the platform 
to the flat cars across heavy planks, fitted them into the 
constricted space allotted, and lashed them there with 
cleats. 

The drivers struggled with the horses. The horses 
never got to like the Hommes and Chevaux. They rose 
on their haunches, at times crying out their disapproval. 
The men tugged at their halters, and persuaded them from 
the rear. A horse already in the narrow, shadowy car 
would look out and shake his head. It was often quite 
difficult to combat such friendly advice. 

The stallions were a problem. If you put them together 
they gossiped about old scandals and ended by fighting 
jealously. If you placed them with lesser beasts they 
expressed their contempt with tooth and hoof. 

"Get 'em in so tight they can't fight," crystallized the 
advice of most of the men, and it worked fairly well. 

We got to know after a time which horses liked to travel 
together, and that simplified matters. 

From the moment the train was loaded until it was un- 
loaded one lived in a racket like the beating of countless 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 111 




Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth 
"The horses never got to like the Hommes and Chevaux" 

bass drums. Noiselessness on the part of a horse was 
a symptom of extreme illness. 

Sick horses were, in fact, a problem. Unless an animal 
was practically in rigor mortis we took him along. Some- 
times one died en route then we had to telegraph ahead 
and make arrangements to evacuate him. Sometimes 
the sick survived the journey and died on the picket line 
afterwards. Infrequently they got well. It was the best 
we could do with animals as scarce as they were. 

When a battery had finished loading it looked a good 



112 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

deal like a circus train. The heads of horses appeared 
through the open doors of some box cars. Men sat, dang- 
ling their legs, in others. The fourgon always apppeared 
gigantic on its flat, and behind it stretched the sleek in- 
quisitive noses of the pieces and the stubby bulk of cais- 
sons and limbers. Usually the water cart and the rolling 
kitchen were on a flat next to the men's cars. Brown 
figures were busy about the kitchen, and a promising 
smoke belched from its chimney. 

It was on that first journey that we learned to know and 
love the clumsy, sooty rolling-kitchen. On the road 
it was incredibly noisy, and it had a habit of shedding its 
parts; yet it stood frequently between us and hunger and 
cold. It was our best friend against evil weather and too 
much physical labor. On these train journeys it gave us 
hot food, and it made us independent of the very unsatis- 
factory coffee stops. 

There were certain stations that were announced to us 
by that name. The train paused at them usually at in- 
convenient hours, long enough for the men to line up with 
mess cups which were filled with a black liquid from un- 
appetizing pails. They were supposed to be a convenience, 
but they seemed to possess also a routine element. An in- 
terpreter would rush up to the officers' car sometime be- 
fore reaching one of these places. 

"Coffee stop in an hour. You will want coffee there." 

Not a question. A command. 

The train commander would shake his head, pointing to 
the black cloud rising from the rolling kitchen. He could 
grin at the surprise and disapproval of the interpreter. 

Corn willy, too, it ought not to be forgotten, loses much 
of its agony when warmed and disguised with some less 
dreadful substance such as canned tomatoes or stewed 
carrots. 

Eating from the rolling kitchen introduced a sporting 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 113 

element into our travels. The mess sergeant gambled on 
having his meal ready for a suitable stop. The train com- 
mander hazarded leaving many men behind when he 
ordered them to descend from their cars and form a line by 
the kitchen. For you couldn't tell much about the length 
of halts anywhere except at coffee or watering stops. 

The train would pull up, let us say at noon. The mess 
sergeant would announce himself ready. The train com- 
mander would confer with the chef de gare. Sometimes 
the train commander would know French. More often 
he wouldn't. 

"Ici!" he would say. "Combien de temps?" 

The chef de gare would look at him, puzzled. Then a 
gleam of pleased intelligence would light his face. 

"Oui. 'Fait beaux temps — tres sec." 

The train commander would look at him doubtfully. 
Did that mean much or little.'' Sec had a brief sound. 
One had to make sure. He would point, therefore, to the 
train. He would then with his hand indicate motion. 
He would display his wrist watch. He would wheedle : 

"Ici! Beaucoup or petit?" 

The chef de gare would smile in friendly fashion. 

"Oui, Mon Capitaine. Beaucoup des Americans. Les 
Boches seront malade." 

The captain's face would usually express an emotion 
bordering on tears — an eloquent emotion, which usually 
interpreted everything for the official. His face would 
brighten. He would look at his own watch. Realizing 
the futility of further words, he would carefully indicate 
two points on the dial. 

"Quarante — minutes," the captain would say. "Get 
them out with mess kits," he would call to his aides. 

Tumbling from their cars the men would come and form 
a feverish line. Details would carry pails of food forward 
to the drivers. The captain would watch with a smile. 



114 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"You know I'm picking up a lot of this hngo," he would 
boast contentedly. 

Then the locomotive whistle would blow. 

"That can't be for us!" 

But the chef de gare would think otherwise. He would 
come running, waving his arms. 

"En voiture! Vite! Le train partira." 

That's always easy enough to understand. 

' ' Quarante minutes . Vous — di t . " 

The chef de gare would be through with argument. The 
engine driver, never having wasted words on the subject, 
would simply start the train, out of the kindness of his 
soul holding the pace down at first. The men would 
tumble back into the cars with their half -finished dinners. 
The details would come scurrying back with their pails. 
From all directions soldiers who had gone in search of 
water would tear back, their clusters of canteens tinkling 
pleasantly. 

Usually everybody got aboard. Word would come back 
to the captain that the men had been checked. Then 
everyone would comment pleasantly on the customs of the 
country. 

But as a rule we got fed, and it was good, very, very good. 

When we could we planned meals for the long halts 
allowed us for watering the horses. But the schedule for 
a troop train is not a constant thing, and these halts often 
came at bad times. They were not troublesome affairs 
as a rule. Beside our siding were usually a number of taps, 
so that the job seldom occupied much time. Sometimes 
we could wheedle hay from the American officials. Some- 
times we couldn't. Yet on the whole those summer 
changes of stations were not unpleasant or too trouble- 
some. The weather was fine. The men were not crowded. 
They sang. That's the best indication you can have that 
things are going well. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 115 




Drawn by Capt. Starbuck F. and S. 
"A group of gaunt walls suggested a devastating fire" 



Up through Bordeaux, Perigueux, Limoges, Chateau- 
roux, and Auxerre we journeyed towards the front. 
We expected our definite orders at Is-Sur-Til, but at noon 
on the 8th when we paused at Nuits Sous-Raviere we 
received a telegram which changed our route, and prom- 
ised us orders at Chaumont. We got them there in the 
evening. We would detrain the next morning at Bac- 
carat. 

It rained that night. It was in depressing and gray- 
weather that most of the regiment reached its destination. 

Exactly as the entraining of one battery is much the same 
as another, just so the arrival of each organization at 
Baccarat differed only in the hour. 

Escaping from sleep, we glanced from the cars at a 
strange France. The change was due to more than the 
dull sky, the drifting rain, and the deserted appearance 
of the little station. 

Opposite stretched a row of depressing stone barracks, 
oddly scarred as if they had been for a long time ne- 
glected. Nearby a group of gaunt walls suggested a de- 
vastating fire. A large sign depended from the front of 
the station. 



116 HISTORY OF 305 th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"Shelter for forty men." 

There existed about that place an air of stealth and 
imminence. One responded to a feeling of the proximity 
of the Bosche. A man set down there unexpectedly would 
have taken one look and known himself in the war zone. 

We asked the officer in charge of the yard if we could 
have breakfast before unloading. He looked at us as if he 
suspected our sanity. He glanced about with nervous eyes. 

"Get this battery out of here," he said in a low tone, 
"as quickly as you can. Bosche planes come over all the 
time. You don't want to get caught, do you, with your 
whole outfit in this yard?" 

We went to work without argument. It seldom took a 
battery, under those circumstances, more than an hour to 
desert its train. 

The horses were hustled down the runways. The car- 
riages were lowered along ready planks. The teams were 
harnessed and the battery stood ready for the road. 

We glanced often at the dull sky, our ears alert for the 
whir of aeroplane engines, or the crash of bombs. The 
air remained free of menace, but the sense of imminence 
persisted, and we were glad when a French guide appeared 
and told Colonel Johnson he was to conduct us to our 
bivouac. The column started. Colonel Johnson paused 
to confer with the colonel commanding the French artillery 
brigade which our brigade was to relieve. For three days 
later, the colonel said, a coup de main was planned. Col- 
onel Johnson determined then to win permission for some 
of our artillery to take part in the preliminary bombard- 
ment, and he dashed ahead to Neuf Maisons where infantry 
brigade headquarters had been established. 

The column, meantime, left Baccarat. The order was 
for a fifty meter interval between carriages so that if 
Bosche bombing planes appeared they would do a mini- 
mum of damage. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 117 



There were a number of ruined buildings along the road, 
souvenirs of bombardments and bombing attacks. We 
turned into a woods road that breasted a hill, and rested 
at the top behind a heavy screen of evergreens. The first 
sounds of actual warfare reached us there. To everyone 
it seemed that we were too near the front for road training. 
The men fell silent. Faces were serious. 

A good deal of that firing was undoubtedly from infantry 
grenade and small arms ranges, but we couldn't know that. 
We didn't even suspect it then. Our minds absorbed the 
bark of cannon, and the hateful stutter of machine guns 
as special menaces for us. We visualized ourselves as 
just behind the front line. 

We reached finally a thick forest on the slope of a hill. 
Scattered among the trees were Adrian barracks and huts 
constructed of small logs and trees, of a pattern we had 
all seen in pictures of fighting in the Vosges. 

This was the Bois de Grammont on the main road from 
Bertrichamps to Neuf Maisons. The Headquarters and 
Supply companies, we learned were in the woods by Bert- 
richamps. The Second Battalion would bivouac near 
them. Both these woods were too peaceful for war time. 
In their shelter even the firing we had heard fell away. 

"A bad place for gas," Colonel Johnson decided. 

"We're as close as 
that?" someone asked. 
"Rather near for a biv- 
ouac." 

Colonel Johnson 
smiled, and whispered : 

" Not a bivouac. It's 
our echelon." 

Such a place didn't 

meet with one's pre- DrainhyCavt.Dana,BaU^y a 

conceived notion. An The picket line 




118 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

echelon, station of extra carriages, animals, men, and sup- 
plies just behind the lines, surely could not be as peaceful 
as this — peaceful and attractive even on a gray day. 

"The first platoon of Battery A," the colonel said to 
Captain Dana, "will go into position to-morrow night." 

It brought it very close, but those who got that first 
word received also the impression that the movement 
would be a temporary one, and that the battery would 
come out again after the coup de main, and that we would 
somehow get some road work. The colonel shook his 
head. The batteries would go into position as soon as 
possible after their arrival. The French would remain 
for a while to show us the ropes, but the task of supporting 
our infantry was now to be our own. How would the men 
accept such news in its naked unexpectedness? 

The National Army was a good deal of an experiment. 
It contained every type, race, and temperament. Had 
its brief training fused these uncongenial elements into a 
serviceable whole .f* Each battery commander asked him- 
self this when he made his abrupt announcement immedi- 
ately after his arrival, before his men had had an oppor- 
tunity to forget the fatigue of their three days' journey. 
One such scene answers for the whole. 

The day was about done. In the chilly shadow of the 
woods the battery stood in line. Shelter halves were 
draped from the men's arms. They waited for the order 
to take interval and pitch tents. 

Except for a pleasant rustling of wind in the tree tops 
the forest was silent when the captain faced his command. 

"At ease!" he called. 

There may have been something unfamiliar in his tone. 
The dead leaves of the forest carpet rustled with the rest- 
less movement of many feet. Serious, expectant eyes 
answered the battery commander's stern regard. 

" Men," he began, " I have an announcement to make. I 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 119 

know you have looked forward to a period of road training 
before going into action. My announcement is that you 
won't have it. You're going into the Hne. The first 
platoon of this battery will go in to-morrow night. The 
second platoon will follow the night after. That's all. 
Battery attention! Count off!" 
Heels clicked together. 

"One, two three, four. One, two, three, four." 
The numbers ran crisply down the line. You've heard 
any quantity of organizations count off, but it's doubtful 
if you've ever heard anything like that outside of the Na- 
tional Army in France. The serious expressions didn't 
alter particularly, but the heads snapped around with a 
rare precision. The voices were big and hoarse with a 
sort of helpless effort. It was as if these oddly assorted 
men were all trying to tell their captain the same thing, 
and, because they wanted to tell him so hard, couldn't 
quite get it out. 



XI 
MAKING THE HUN DANCE 

That same evening the expected blow fell — rather 
sooner than anyone had anticipated. Major General 
Duncan, commanding the 77th Division, sent for Colonel 
Johnson, took him away from the regiment, and assigned 
him to G. I. at division headquarters. That loss is hard to 
estimate. The regiment missed his understanding and 
the inspiration of his ambition. He never lost his interest 
in the 305th, but his influence came from afar off. He was 
no longer a part of us. 

For the diflScult moment Captain Dana became acting 
battalion commander. Early on the morning of the 10th 
he took his acting adjutant and his battery reconnaissance 
oflScer and set out to reconnoiter the position Battery A 
would take up. 

There are all sorts of reconnaissances, and we experi- 
enced most of them between Lorraine and the Meuse. 
Some are pleasant and not particularly hazardous. Some 
are dangerous in the extreme. Some are not fit to write 
about, because of their labor, their anxieties, and their lack 
of result. This was one of the first kind. It was always 
more or less pleasant relieving the French. And both bat- 
talion commanders can tell you the same story of a kind- 
ness, helpfulness, and hospitality utterly at variance with 
one's notions of life at the front. We never ceased to mar- 
vel at the easy and efficient control the French had of their 
work. Things that seemed most dreadfully complicated 
and difficult to us at first, they took with a smile and a 

120 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 121 

careless gesture. They impressed you as having assumed 
a habit of war that obUterated all the past, that assumed 
until the end of the world a continuation of disagreeable 
and morbid events that must be made the best of. 

You trotted towards them through a succession of biv- 
ouacs of troops either resting or waiting to go up. We 
came, of course, on those Lorraine reconnaissances to our 
first shell screens — rows of dead cedar branches or dirty 
sacking, stretched between poles. At frequent intervals 
overhead hung lines from which branches were suspended. 
These shielded the road from aerial observation. 

Regimental Headquarters had been established in Neuf 
Maisons, a village of perhaps a hundred houses nesthng 
in a fold of the hills. The French for the present were 
standing by and rather teaching the child to walk. They 
gave us our destination, the group headquarters in Pex- 
onne, a mile and a half nearer the enemy. The road be- 
yond Neuf Maisons was more carefully screened. Ahead 
at last lay a village, which, even at that distance, had the 
appearance of something dead and corrupt. There wasn't 
a house which hadn't suffered from shell fire. Many were 
heaps of rubble. Here a fagade would be gone. You 
could see into the intimacies of that house — clothes hung 
against a wall, a row of bottles in an open cupboard, a 




Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D 
"Something dead and corrupt" 



122 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

tumbled bed. In the choir of the chuuch yawned a hole 
large enough to take a column of squads. 

There were doughboys in the streets, keeping close to the 
walls with furtive movements, as if they expected someone 
to catch them at an indiscretion. Engineers suggested the 
presence of nearby dumps. Guards were posted. One 
stopped us near the church. He seemed to think we had 
lost our way. He wouldn't let us pass until he had learned 
our mission and had scanned our identity books. 

Just beyond we found the French group headquarters 
in a large dwelling reinforced with splinter screens con- 
structed of logs and sand bags, and comparatively unhurt. 

We had been told to ask for Captain Nicoll, the acting 
group commander. It must have been after seven o'clock 
by that time. We knew the captain had been warned the 
night before of our coming. Our minds were full of our- 
selves, and the serious nature of our errand. The war 
might have depended on what we where doing that morn- 
ing. War for us was a matter of perpetual wakefulness, 
of extended hurry and effort, whether useful or not. 

There was no stir about the headquarters. We knocked. 
We pulled at a broken bell handle. We glanced, amazed, 
at each other. 

"Is it possible," we asked in our innocence of amateurs, 
"that they are still in bed?" 

It was possible. After an interval a shuffling step within 
became audible. The door opened. A sleepy soldier, 
haK-dressed, might have been gazing at a collection of un- 
expected specimens. Yet he overcame his astonishment 
and led us into a dining-room, tastefully paneled in dark 
wood. From there we heard reluctant stirrings upstairs, 
and before long three lieutenants appeared. Their aston- 
ishment, perhaps their disapproval, was smothered behind 
greetings and an undreamed of hospitality. 

The captain, they explained, had been occupied until 



HISTORY OF 305t]i FIELD ARTILLERY 123 

very late the night before, but our affair was quite 
simple. 

One produced from a cupboard in the dark paneling a 
cob webbed bottle. 

"It is forty years old," he said, pouring a white liquid 
into glasses. 

Coffee appeared. These officers were in no hurry to dis- 
cuss our affair. We experienced a sense of guilt while we 
waited for them to come to business. Our restlessness 
grew. We wanted to be doing something. 

At first that was the attitude of the average American 
soldier towards his job. Experience taught him eventually 
to take the day's work a trifle more sanely. But on the 
whole he was in a hurry. In quiet sectors he was up and 
at work earlier than the French. He took about one-fifth 
as much time for meals as they did. He went to bed a 
good deal later and seemed seldom to have had enough 
sleep; yet, until he learned something of the tricks of war, 
he was always surprised at the end of a day to find that the 
French, while apparently loafing, had accomplished a good 
deal more than he had done. 

When the coffee was finished our Frenchmen were in- 
clined to smoke and chat. Since we were in their hands 
we could only hint our anxiety. 

They pointed out the paneling of the room. 

"The house belongs to a rich man. Your soldiers call 
him the Count of Pexonne." 

One picked up the dusty bottle. 

"He had a taste for such things. You haven't seen his 
cellar. You know in French a cellar is a cave, and a cave 
has come to mean a shelter from bombardment. When 
we saw the Count's cave we decided never had war led us 
to such a shelter, and we didn't care how long the Bosches 
kept us there. It was filled with such bottles as these. 
They're about gone now, for the town is to be abandoned. 



124 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

and since there is very Httle transportation for the civiHans 
the Count has sold his treasures to the French and Amer- 
icans for a nothing." 

We were astonished to learn the town was to be aban- 
doned. 

"Yes, as you can see, it is under constant shell fire, 
but the principal thing is the gas. They can fill it full of 
gas in a moment. You will notice that all the civilians 
carry gas masks, for the gas comes in frequently. In a 
few days the village will be deserted." 

We moved at last. We descended first to the famous 
cave, the heart of the group's system of communication. 
We stood in a damp, vaulted cellar. A telephone operator 
crouched before three four-direction switchboards against 
the front wall. A number of wires came through an open- 
ing. They meshed like an untidy spider's web across the 
ceiling. 

"You can communicate with the whole army system 
from here," one of the lieutenants explained. " That will 
make a little difficulty for you at the start, because, since 
the village is to be abandoned, you will have a new com- 
mand post. You will have to arrange a new telephone 
central there." 

Another of the officers got his horse, and we mounted 
and rode from the village at last. We hadn't expected to 
be able to continue our reconnaissance mounted, but most 
of the road, our guide explained, was defiladed, and on 
such a dull day the Bosche wasn't likely to be trouble- 
some. 

We left the dying village by a country road which 
brought us after a few hundred meters to the first of the 
battery positions. The pieces were placed in casemates 
constructed in the high bank of the road. The whole was 
extremely well camouflaged, and impressed us at first as a 
perfect position. The road did away with the danger of 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 125 

fresh tracks. It simplified the bringing up of ammunition. 
Then we noticed on both sides of it, and close to the guns, 
many shell holes. 

"Yes," our guide said, " the Bosches have located this 
position. It would be well for you to leave this camou- 
flage up and locate your guns somewheres else." 

We examined casually a number of possible positions, 
but that morning we were chiefly concerned with the loca- 
tion of Battery A's guns which were to fire in the proposed 
coup de main. The French had decided on their approx- 
imate position near one of the French batteries in the 
thick woods of La Haie Labarre. 

As we climbed a hill the sun appeared from behind the 
clouds. We were cap- ,^p-^ . ,7<>, ,>^jmv 

tured by the beauty ^ ms,>k\^Mm ]'''^XW\ 

and apparent peace of 
this rolling wooded 
country of the foothills 

oftheVoSgeS. Between Bro^hvCavt.Bana^BafUmA 

^ Ine water cart 

groves of birch and 

hemlock the fields were yellow with ripe wheat. From 
the yellow, like elaborately set jewels, flashed the tur- 
quoise blue of corn flowers, and the vivid scarlet of 
poppies. What firing there was that morning was far off 
and troubled us not at all. Except for our mission there 
was really nothing to remind us we were at the front, 
well within range, likely to be opened on at any moment. 

We rode down a slope along a narrow path that over- 
hanging branches nearly obliterated. Here and there 
among the trees appeared French artillerymen. One took 
our horses. The forest was full of a quiet, intense activity. 
Some figures lifted with difficulty stones and great blocks 
of cement. Others moved among the trees, bearing iron 
beams and logs, heavy and unwieldy. Many stooped 
and rose rhythmically, ilccompanying their motions came 




126 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

the crunching of spades in earth and the thud of dirt on the 
dead leaves. 

Our guide took all this in with a sweeping gesture. 

"We have already got the new battalion command post 
well started here. You have only to install yourselves 
and complete it as you go along." 

Nearby we found the battery under the tutelage of which 
our Battery A would be placed until the final relief. Cap- 
tain DesVignes, the officer commanding, took us over the 
position. We marveled at the neat and efficient arrange- 
ment of the positions and the ammunition dumps. We 
had never imagined such trail logs as the French had 
here. 

The captain showed us, not four hundred meters to the 
right, the temporary position suggested for Battery A. 
There was plenty of natural cover. Just to the rear sloped 
a steep wooded hillside, perfect for the construction of dug- 
outs. At the edge of the forest was a rough road which 
men and carriages could track safely. Captain Dana was 
satisfied and returned to the echelon to arrange for getting 
the first platoon up that night. 

It was understood that morning that the French group 
would remain with us for a week or more. On their de- 
parture we would leave the temporary positions for the 
ones they occupied now. All that was altered the next 
day, and, except for the first platoon of Battery A, the 
guns of the regiment went directly to the French emplace- 
ments. 

It was noon. The French habit obtruded itself. Why, 
the captain wanted to know, shouldn't we lunch? Captain 
DesVignes' one officer appeared. Lieutenant Riveau, execu- 
tive, reconnaissance officer, telephone officer, department 
B man, and popotte, as the French call their mess officer. In 
front of a round, white tent a table had been laid beneath 
the pine trees with cloth napkins and china. It wasn't 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 127 

war. It was a picnic. A copy of the Mercure de France 
lay nearby. We didn't talk of war. The only reminder 
was the mutter of guns, distant and undisturbing. 

The Americans tried to wheedle the chatter back to the 
things that obsessed them. 

" Do you French always run an orienting line? " 

"Always," Riveau answered languidly, "in theory; 
never in practice." 

He steered quickly away. 

" I have been reading some of your American books " 

The captain sipped his pinard — the French issue wine — 
as thoughtfully as if it had been a rare vintage. With a 
ceremonial air at the end of the meal he produced from the 
tent a nearly priceless bottle of liqueur. But the minds 
of the Americans were on orienting lines and gun positions. 
Riveau surrendered at last, and accompanied us to a jog 
in the woods of La Haie Labarre. 

We had a plane table. Riveau set it up. We removed 
our helmets so as not to disturb the needle, while Riveau 
oriented his board with a declinator compass. We shot 
a line across the map from our location through the regis- 
tration point. We drove a stake on the continuation of 
that line in the wheat field. We drove another stake be- 
neath the plane table. 

A rocket went up. We scarcely noticed. It had sud- 
denly come to us that we were locating the first piece of 
the National Army at the front. Lieutenant Riveau, of the 
French Artillery had his hand in that with Lieutenant 
Camp, acting adjutant, and Lieutenant Brassell, Battery 
A's reconnaissance officer. 

That was the climax of the afternoon. Everything was 
ready for the guns. We returned to the echelon. We 
were met with the news that the change necessitated by 
Colonel Johnson's departure had been made. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Stimson had been given command of the first 



128 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

battalion. He brought with him from Regimental Head- 
quarters his old Upton adjutant. Lieutenant Klots. 

Battery B had arrived during the morning reconnais- 
sance, and Battery C came in that afternoon. 

The movement commenced that night according to 
schedule. It was not a relief. That started the next 
night after it had been announced that the French would 
depart, leaving us to work out our own salvation. 

During the afternoon Captain Dana had sent a detail 
of men to La Haie Labarre to prepare the emplacements. 
At eleven o'clock the horses were harnessed to the car- 
riages, the drivers mounted, and the platoon moved out 
of the black woods and down the road. There was no 
nervous accompaniment. These men went about the job 
with the efficiency of veterans. It would have been im- 
possible to suspect that they faced the enemy for the first 
time. There was only one thing. Everyone was un- 
naturally quiet, as if the Hun might hear. The rumbling 
of wheels on the hard road surface was disquieting if you 
didn't stop to compute how far away the enemy actually 
was. It was a dull night. Except for some firing on the 
left and an occasional star shell there was nothing to 
startle. 

Neuf Maisons had gone to bed. From the country road 
above it the star shells were plainer, but the woods were 
peaceful — and black. 

We were to learn to use such darkness as cats do, but 
that night was the regiment's first experience. Anyone 
that flashes a light at a battery position is either a spy or 
a fool. The discipline is pretty nearly the same in either 
case. Delicate tasks must be performed by the sense of 
touch, by a special instinct that an artilleryman has to 
develope. The pieces must be accurately placed. The 
trail must be nicely fitted into the trail log. You have to 
pile ammunition according to the law. Your camouflage 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 129 

must be perfectly arranged so that the first gleam of day- 
light will find everything covered. The only lights that 
are ever allowed at a battery position are the shrouded 
bulbs at the sights, the tiny slits of the aiming stick lamps, 
and the hidden gleam of a candle in a dugout, perhaps, 
where the battery commander or the executive figures 
new targets. These, if properly arranged, give away 
nothing. 

The green men of the 305th accomplished their tasks in 
the brief time they had. No. 1 piece was set directly over 
the stake the reconnaissance party had driven that after- 
noon. No. 2 piece was twenty paces to its left. The pla- 
toon was ready to fire before daylight. 

With the departure of the French announced, a more 
extended reconnaissance was made the morning of the 
11th. Colonel Stimson went ahead to Pexonne in the side 
car. The commanding officers of Batteries B and C had 
their first touch of the front that day. Our little party 
was welcomed. As we rode into Pexonne eight shells fell 
in the town, and were followed by a noisy and thick 
barrage from anti-aircraft guns. We glanced overhead 
and saw among the white bursts directly over the ruins 
eight Hun planes, flashing white in the sun. 

We dismounted hurriedly at the command post. Our 
guide of the day before came running from behind the 
splinter screen by the door. 

"Get in here quick!" he warned. 

The officers responded. The orderlies trotted the horses 
off to a comparatively safe stone stable. 

We waited inside while the anti-aircraft barrage drove 
the planes higher and higher and finally back to their base. 
Then we settled down to the business of arranging the re- 
lief. It was complicated. It required a delightful lunch- 
eon, moistened with some survivals of the Count's cellar. 
It irritated the Americans who felt they were wasting time. 



130 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

As a matter of fact there was far more to be got from that 
luncheon than appeared on the surface. In spite of our 
impatience we absorbed sector gossip that would scarcely 
have come to us from a study of plans of employment or 
the terrain itself. 

Our infantry, we gathered, was having greater losses 
than we had expected from the normal activity of that por- 
tion of the front. One battalion had been caught during a 
relief and had had many casualties. A few nights before 
the Huns had placed a box barrage around a platoon, had 
come in with gas and a new type of grenade, and had prac- 
tically wiped out the command. An oflBcer from our in- 
fantry battalion headquarters dropped in for coffee and 
told us a story of the affair. 

"Blank who was in command of the platoon, you know, 
got hurt — lost his foot, in fact. That's tough luck — in a 
way. Looking at it in another way he'll go home, and 
maybe be decorated. 

"By the way, he had a little Italian in his outfit. I 
remember the fellow well. Utterly worthless. That's 
what we all thought. Couldn't speak English. Rotten 
soldier. On kitchen police most of the time. Blank had 
tried to transfer him, but nobody would stand for it. So 
the dago was in the trenches with the platoon when the 
show started. The barrage Jerry treated 'em to plastered 
the whole works. Then he threw in gas. Shriveled some 
of 'em up. Then he came himself with these new-fangled 
grenades, and mopped things up. Blank, as I say, was 
hurt. He lay on the floor of the trench. A Jerry officer 
and two or three Jerries were around him, going through 
his pockets. Blank heard something and glanced up. 
There at the turning of the trench stood the dago who 
couldn't speak English, who was just about perpetual kit- 
chen police, that Blank had tried all along to shake. His 
gas mask was off. His face looked different. It expressed 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 131 

a decided disapproval of the whole proceeding. The little 
fellow's lips set. His rifle, bayonet fixed, rose slowly to the 
charge. He leaned forward. Blank saw, and called to him. 

" 'Get back, you idiot ! For God's sake, get back ! ' 

"But the dago, single-handed, ran to the rescue of his 
officer. He charged the lot of them." 

The narrator paused, as if all was finished. 

"Well.?" someone asked. 

"Oh! What do you suppose? One of the Jerries toss- 
ed a hand grenade and blew the little dago to pieces." 

The story interpreted something for us. 

At that luncheon, too, we heard of the various barrages 
we were supposed to fire under a variety of conditions, and 
why some positions in the sector were better for the work 
than others. Capt. Nicoil, it developed, had an excep- 
tionally complete dossier. It contained plans of the tele- 
phone, wireless, and optical liaisons. There were careful 
maps showing the barrages and the O. C. Ps. There was 
an extended plan of employment and infinite orientation 
data. It made us rather dizzy. It seemed incredible 
that any human mind could digest the voluminous con- 
tents of that folder. 

We examined the positions recommended by the French. 
Battery A would move into the French emplacements oc- 
cupied at present by Captain DesVignes' battery. Battery 
B would go to a fresh position in a wheat field a kilometer 
and a half to the south west of Pexonne. Battery C would 
take over an old French position on the edge of Ker Arvor 
woods. Its platoons would be separated by a hundred 
meters. To balance this inconvenience there was an 
elaborate system of dugouts, and a quarry offering dead 
space close to the back wall. Lieutenant Kane at first 
established himself here, but the menace from gas was 
great, so he moved to a dugout on the hill. 



132 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Lieutenant Montgomery chose for command post a tum- 
bledown farm house near his guns. Dugouts were well un- 
der way at the Battery A position and the new battalion 
command post. 

We would not, we learned that day, have perfect obser- 
vation. The battalion observatory in a fringe of birch 
and hemlock between two fields of standing wheat offered 
a good view of the left of the sector, but nothing of the 
right. It was called Nenette and the command post went 
by the name of Rintintin. It was our first introduction 
to this interesting pair. 

During our stay in Lorraine we were always reconnoiter- 
ing for a more satisfactory observatory. We became con- 
vinced that it didn't exist. Most of our barrages, then, 
would have to be fired, as it were, blind. Rockets from 
the right of the reference point, the ruined church tower 
in Badonviller, would have to be relayed, always a danger- 
ous and uncertain expedient. 

Battery C had an eventual barrage in front of the left 
of another army. There was an observatory at a place 
called Pierre Percee from which Lieutenant Kane could reg- 
ister his guns for this mission. The dossier recorded a 
forward observatory. When it was examined it was found 
to be well in front of the normal position of our front line 
platoons — that is, in No-Man's Land, The French ad- 
vised against making use of it, for it is a serious thing to 
place artillerymen in danger of capture needlessly. They 
know too much. 

The situation in the Baccarat sector was unusual. The 
front was so thinly held that one was always apprehensive 
of a surprise attack. There was a line of resistance. For- 
ward of that everything was provisional. Patrols moved 
cautiously through a maze of abandoned trenches. Cos- 
sack posts at night crouched in shell holes or at trench 
corners. Often Americans glided inside the Hun outposts. 



HISTORY OF 3a5th FIELD ARTILLERY 133 

The reverse, of course, was inevitable. There were des- 
perate Httle combats in the dark. It was troublesome 
to get the wounded back. Such conditions moulded too 
expectant an attitude. 

In case of an attack in force these outposts were to fall 
back on the line of resistance where the real stand would 
be made. That necessitated an extreme care in the system 
of rocket calls for barrages. How it worked out you will 
see later. It made us all the more dissatisfied with our 
observatories. Yet we only established one new one which 
was in no way superior to Nenette. We built a platform 
in the tops of several birch trees on the edge of a wood. 
It gave us something to fall back on in case we were shelled 
out of Nenette. 

About three o'clock that afternoon of July 11th. Captain 
Dana, Lieutenant Brassell, and Lieutenant Camp were at 
Nenette, locating points in the sector from the battle map. 
Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson appeared. Captain Dana 
wanted to register. Lieutenant Colonel Stimson was an- 
xious to avoid stirring the enemy up. But the platoon 
was in. The guns were ready. The effect on the men 
of a few rounds was worth considering. So Lieutenant- 
Colonel Stimson consented, and Captain Dana telephoned 
the data down to the battery. The registration point was 
a corner of a Hun trench at a range of 5,500 meters. 

"Fire when ready!" 

The crack of the gun reached us. We heard the pro- 
jectile rushing over our heads 
towards Germany. The first 
shot of the National Army artil- 
lery was on its way. 

That shell was normal charge, 
high explosive. Considering the 
range and the nature of the ZZnhJpri^oXe E,ens, Bowery e 
terrain it was quite reasonable An observatory 




134 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

it should not be observed. The captain called for high 
burst shrapnel, and not long after we heard its swishing 
flight we saw appear near the corner of the trench a pretty 
white ball of smoke. There^was an error of only three mils 
in deflection, and less than a hundred meters in range. 

Corporal Andrew Ancelowitz laid the piece. Sergeant 
Fred Wallace gave the command to fire. Private George 
Elsnick pulled the lanyard for the shot that put the Na- 
tional Army artillery in the war. 

"Guess," said someone drily, "they heard that shot in 
Berlin." 

Certainly it was the first note of the music to which the 
Hun danced back to the Rhine and defeat. 



XII 

CONSOLIDATING IN LORRAINE 

The second battalion followed close on the heels of the 
first. Major Wanvig and his staff arrived in Baccarat 
with Battery D at midnight July 10th. Battery E came 
in on the morning of the 11th, and Battery F that after- 
noon. Major Wanvig established his echelon near the 
Supply and Headquarters Companies in the woods above 
Bertrichamps. 

The major with Lieutenant Fenn, his acting adjutant. 
Lieutenant Church, acting telephone officer, and Captains 
Starbuck, Storer, and Mitchell, commanding the three 
batteries, made his reconnaissance on July 12th. 

These reconnaissances for the relief of the French, as 
has been said, all shared the same surprises and the same 
hospitality. The conditions the Second Battalion found, 
however, differed in some ways from those met by the First. 
To begin with the French group had only two batteries in 
position. It was decided to place Batteries D and E in 
their emplacements. A new position was chosen for Bat- 
tery F to the right of the Neuf Maisons-Vacquerville 
road. 

The group command post was in Vacquerville, a pleas- 
ant little village which shell fire had spared. Major Wan- 
vig moved into the Frenchmen's quarters and offices. 
Scotland was the inherited name of the command post and 
Godfrin of the battalion observatory. 

Here, too, the question of observation offered no perfect 
answer. Godfrin was not better than Nenette, nor had it 

135 



136 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




U,-. "-r^ Jfcis .<*^5 . Cho^pj,"^' '^ 




?f?M?^ 



i Je.Hai.c-UbjntA;;../-. 






Drawn by Corporal Tucker, Hg. Co. 
The regiment's home in Lorraine 

as good natural cover. It was an overgrown hole in the 
ground, covered with a sheet of elephant iron. It was in 
front of the woods. Because of its vulnerability it was 
used only for observation of the sector. For conduct of 
fire each battery had an observatory of its own, but no one 
of them approached perfection. 

At the start an unexpected task faced the Second Battal- 
ion. There was a battery in their portion of the front of 
two ninety millimeter and two ninety -five millimeter how- 
itzers, sector property. Lieutenant Pike of Battery D was 
given these guns with nine men from each battery of the 
regiment, and told to find out how they worked, to register 
them, and to fire them on demand. He and his make- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 137 

shift crew solved the mechanical and theoretical mysteries 
of the strange guns. They fired with the rest of the regi- 
ment. 

The relief, meantime, was well under way. The second 
platoon of Battery A, and the first platoons of batteries 
B and C went in on the night of July llth-12th. The 
remainder of B and C followed the next night. Two guns 
each from D, E, and F moved up on the night of the 13th- 
14th. The rest of the second battalion completed the re- 
lief, the night of the 14th-15th. We escaped a single 
casualty. Either the Huns hadn't got wind of the change, 
or else they had guessed the wrong roads. 

It is, nevertheless, always a nervous business going into 
position over main highways which you know the enemy 
has registered, and when you are well aware that his intel- 
ligence department is performing miracles to learn the 
exact hour of your relief. All you can do is to leave wide 
distances between your carriages, and often the roads are 
too crowded for that. The whir of every aeroplane is a 
warning to take cover, and, of course, you can't leave the 
road. 

The chief danger lurks at the position itself. The pieces 
to be relieved must remain in their emplacements ready 
to fire on call until the relieving guns are at hand. Con- 
sequently the guns are jammed in a small space. Many 
men and horses are crowded in and about the pits, working 
in the dark. It is at such a moment that a shell gets the 
maximum confusion and the greatest number of casualties. 
In the Baccarat sector the Huns shelled and dropped 
bombs at the wrong moments. We could laugh at him. 
We were in position, and fairly well protected. We were 
ready to back up our own infantry. 

Now we faced for the first time the problem of organiz- 
ing a position. That is an irritating and endless process 
for a green outfit. During the three weeks we spent in 



138 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

Lorraine we learned more than months of school could 
have taught us. 

The Second Battalion, with the plant it had inherited 
from the French, settled itself with less trouble than the 
First. 

Colonel Stimson moved at once from Pexonne to the 
new command post in Haie Labarre woods, and, with 
details drawn from the batteries, hurried the work on the 
dugouts the French had started. Until some of these 
dugouts should be completed the headquarters would be 
quite unprotected. And that was only one task. A new 
system of communication was necessary. Both battalions 
had to organize their observatories and arrange their liai- 
sons with the infantry. 

We had realized all along we were short of officers, but 
we had felt we were plentifully supplied with men. This 
abrupt concentration of work, even in a quiet sector, 
taught us that the artillery tables of organization, made in 
America, had not foreseen all the demands of this type of 
warfare. 

At the front the Headquarters Company could no longer 
be treated as a unit. Regimental headquarters, the two 
battalion headquarters, and the echelons were separated 
from each other by several kilometers. At the start, then, 
the three details were divorced for tactical and administra- 
tive purposes. That raised new problems of subsistence 
and transportation. Each detail, moreover, was sub- 
divided. Men had to be at the echelon to care for the 
animals, and to draw and transport rations. When we 
had got the specialists to the command posts we found 
it necessary to supplement them by drafts from the bat- 
teries. The batteries complained that that left them short- 
handed. The telephone details were woefully small. We 
shifted scout and instrument men into communication. 
We tortured the dignified tables of organization until they 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 139 

were unrecognizable, but the result was something that 
could wage war. 

At the start let us review what we did with communica- 
tion, for that was the first problem we had to solve. A 
regiment at the front without practical means of communi- 
cation might just as well be in America. It is out of ac- 
tion. Telephone officers and men, therefore, must lay 
and maintain wires, no matter how heavy the shelling; 
must keep every portion of the organization in touch with 
the others, and the whole in talking radius with neighbor- 
ing units. 

In that sector the 305 th had something like a hundred 
kilometers of wire to lay or maintain. We took over 
many lines from the French, but a good deal of their wire 
might have been a souvenir of the first battle of the Marne. 
For no apparent reason beyond senility it would go dead, 
and that type of trouble is difficult and hungry of time to 
locate. A great deal of the new wire issued us had insula- 
tion that cracked easily, and, because of color and texture 
shielded its faults jealously. We had to lay it, conse- 
quently, with an extreme care. 

The weather helped. It rained very little, so, with the 
heavy twisted pair given the regiment in America, we sup- 
plemented our poorer stuff and kept communication al- 
ways going. 

The cellar in the Second Battalion command post at 
Vacquerville made an ideal central, and the few new lines 
necessary for the command were quickly run. 

The First Battalion completed a small dugout the first 
two days in, and set up its switchboards there. It made 
use of what French lines ran to Captain DesVignes old 
position, but for the most part it had to run new ones to 
its various units. 

Two men were on duty in the centrals for shifts of twen- 
ty-four hours. One man sat at the switchboard, and the 



140 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

other could sleep or read or write letters. They could 
change about as they pleased. It wasn't as simple as it 
seems. At times those boards were busier than the busiest 
central in the stock exchange, and often there was more 
necessity for speed than in the commercial world, and 
high ranking officers as a rule are less patient than the 
tired business man. 

Then there were unforeseen complications. 

We all knew that code names were used at the front. 
That was natural. It was impossible to shout names and 
organizations over wires when the enemy was almost 
certainly listening in. But we hadn't suspected how 
quickly such customs of secrecy cast a net of fascina- 
tion about even mature men. In Lorraine nearly every 
officer devised a code name for himself, and until higher 
authority interfered, guarded it jealously. It produced 
a clenching of hands and a tearing of hair among earnest 
operators. 

Colonel Doyle was "Hub." His adjutant went to the 
tinkling sound of "Mess-kit." Lieutenant-Colonel Stim- 
son was "Night gun." His adjutant, with perfectly 
straight hair, was "Pompadour." Major Wanvig was 
"West", and his adjutant, "Kansas," which suggested at 
least an origin. 

The operators took it seriously enough. They had to. 
Their mispronunciations were due to phonetic idiosyn- 
crasies rather than any humorous intention. Rintintin, 
for example, got to a staccato Ra-ta-tin and Nenette often 
was Nanny-et. So one might hear : 

"Pump a door's busy Mess skit." 

Or: 

"I can't get Night gown." 

Such stealth had its more critical side for the telephone 
men. The infantry had listeners in, who spent their days 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 141 

and nights trying to catch operators talking in the clear — 
that is using the numbers of organizations or the names of 
places or well known individuals. 

One day a terrifying document reached the regiment. 
One of our operators had been heard using the names of 
places. The infantry brigade commander, we were in- 
formed, was extremely angry about it. There must be no 
more talking in the clear. Word went around, to meet the 
situation, that the operators were to put no one through 
unless he asked for organizations and persons by their 
code names. That same evening the irritated general 
wished to speak to one of the command posts. His ad- 
jutant got the switchboard. 

"Any officer will do," he said. 

The youthful operator, faithful to his job, not being 
able to guess that the infantry didn't know the local trick 
names of the artillery, replied: 

"Can't put you through unless you ask for the officer 
you want to talk to by his code name." 

Drama ! 

Persistent diplomacy alone spared a breach between the 
two branches of the service. But the operators couldn't 
get it straight, 

"If you talk in the clear," they said, "you get the deuce, 
and if you refuse to talk in the clear you get the devil." 

But generals as well as men learn from practical exper- 
ience with such inevitable inconsistencies. And Division 
Headquarters stepped in. It published a list of those 
officers who ranked code names. No others would be 
authorized or tolerated. But such habits aren't broken 
easily, and often over the wire sighed the eccentric nick- 
names of the lowly. 

The operators did a good job, and, even in that sector, 
a hard one. Lines go out from shell fire, from weather 
conditions, from traffic, from bad wire. The panels were 



142 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

tested every hour. The operator would plug in. If he 
got a response from the other end, he simply said : 

"O. K." 

Which meant he was testing and was satisfied. 

If he got nothing, or ground noises, he reported to his 
telephone officer that the line was out, and two men were 
sent to find the break and repair it. They went in pairs, 
so that if a man should be hit in a lonely place help could 
be got to him. 

The hauls were long in Lorraine. You had to carry a 
telephone for testing. You would go along for a few 
hundred meters, scrape the insulation from the wire, hook 
your telephone in, and call central. When you failed to 
get a response you knew the break lay between you and 
your last testing point, and you examined that section of 
wire until you had spotted the trouble. 

There were alternative talking routes to all stations. 
When the operator found a line dead, he got the other end 
through a different line and warned the operator there to 
send men out. The other fellow didn't always do it, and 
one pair of men might have to walk five or six miles to find 
the trouble — it really happened a number of times — in the 
other fellow's switchboard. That didn't make for the 
best of feeling among the details, but such irritations were 
temporary. 

Then there were always curious things happening to 
lines. We had a grounded circuit to Pierre Percee. There 
was a French central there. The fact that the line had a 
ground return indicated that it was not much used. It 
was, in fact, only important in an emergency. Still, in 
view of that emergency, it had to be kept working, and it 
was perpetually going out. One day Corporal Caen and 
an operator went through the lonely, wooded country that 
separated the two centrals. About half way they came 
upon a party of French telephone men who were stringing 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 143 

a wire that looked suspiciously like a remnant of our 
Peirre Percee line. A gap nearly a kilometer long existed 
in that. Corporal Caen spoke French. He could gesture, 
too, like a Frenchman, and he knew some of the most 
powerful French phrases. But the party shrugged its 
shoulders. 

"You could be shot for this." 

"Ah, oui," said the Frenchmen indifferently. 

They finally consented to explain. 

" Our officer told us to run a line to the infantry, coute 
que coute. We didn't have enough wire. It's only cost 
a kilometer or two of yours. What are you scolding 
about? Don't we, like you, have to obey orders?" 

The corporal didn't crave international complications, 
so he trudged back, got more wire, and bridged the gap. 
But there was a curse on that line. Another day he found 
a party of Americans from a neighboring unit playing the 
same salvage trick, and those fellows he had on their knees, 
begging him not to court martial them or have them shot 
at dawn. 

For tampering with a line in the field is a very serious 
offence. It is likely to do incalculable damage. 

There was one line that some of the men thought be- 
witched. It played its tricks on a very rainy night. Cohe- 
leach was on the switchboard. When he tested about ten 
o'clock, instead of calling his customary "O. K." he looked 
puzzled, and said something rapidly in French. 

" There are frogs on this line," he announced. 

" Impossible, because that line runs to Battery B." 

" Sure, and I can hear the B operator talking across the 
frogs." 

It looked like a cross. The French line had probably 
been blown from its supports and had fallen over ours. The 
wet weather and faulty insulation would account for the 
rest. Only one man left from one end. In half an hour a 



144 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 



small voice came over the wire, reporting. Through his 
uncertain words we could hear French flowing. The con- 
versation had an astral quality. We could not interrupt it. 
The groping demands of our man somewhere on that line 
in the wet, dark night, failed to dam it. 

*' The line," we distinguished above the queer conversa- 
tion, "has been tied into close to the road." 

It seemed impossible. We asked the startled linesman 
if he had traced the wire. 

"Ye— ye— yes." 

"Where does it go?" 

"That's just it, sir. It isn't natural. It goes to a dark 
dugout." 

" Maybe Huns with a listening in set." 

But even the puzzled Hnesman didn't believe that, for 
over the wire came a weaving of French phrases which 
meant that it was a bitter night for those who fought, a 
bad night to die. 

Our man wasn't afraid of Huns with a listening in set. 
That meant a fair fight, but he didn't like that dark dugout 
with such a conversation slipping from it over a wire. He 
hadn't followed the wire in. He disapproved of attemp- 
ting it. A direct command was necessary. 

He was so long reporting after that that we became un- 
easy. Perhaps there had been something he couldn't con- 
trol — too many Huns talking French. 

The B drop fell at last, and he was on the wire. His 

again — rather more agreeable 
than usual. 

"Spooks? Quit 
your kiddin.' Who 
said anything about 
spooks. Frogs. Line 

Drawn by Capt. Dana, Battery A 

The rolling kitchen tied in, but it wasn't. 



voice was conversational 




HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 145 

A cross. One of these frogs was couchayed. Other got 
lonely and was chinnin' with some central. He had beau- 
coup mangay, and after we chowed he came out with me 
and helped fix the line. O. K. now. Good-night." 

We had always that fear of Germans tapping our lines. 
There were spies about. Conditions favored them. In 
Lorraine most of the inhabitants speak German, and there 
are many German names. The mingling of Americans 
and French helped. A Hun in American uniform among 
the French, or one in French uniform among the Americans 
was likely to go unquestioned. 

A line to one of our advanced positions was interfered 
with several times. Switchboard operators were called 
by men whose voices they failed to recognize. These men 
asked carefully formed questions designed to draw military 
information. Investigation would disclose tiny breaks 
in the insulation such as a listening in set might make. 
We placed patrols on that line. One day, close to the 
infantry, they caught a fellow fumbling with the wire. He 
couldn't give a clear account of himself, so he was turned 
over to higher authority. What became of him we never 
heard. But that form of annoyance on that line ceased. 

We were particularly anxious about our wires to the in- 
fantry. In order that the artillery may properly support 
the infantry it must know the doughboys' needs, where 
his front line is, where his advanced patrols are. In Lor- 
raine we kept telephonic communication open fairly easily. 
In other sectors it was, as you will see, a more difficult prob- 
lem. But you must have something besides that. Artil- 
lery officers must live with the infantry commanders, ex- 
plaining the possibilities and limitations of artillery fire, 
acting as go-betweens, as it were. Regimental headquarters 
kept personally in touch with infantry brigade headquar- 
ters. An officer was usually sent to infantry regimental 
headquarters. Always a lieutenant went from each artil- 



146 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

lery battalion to the infantry battahon commander in the 
front hne. 

Lieutenant Edward F. Graham went from the First Bat- 
tahon to the infantry; Lieutenant Karl McNair from the 
Second. Each took with him half a dozen enlisted men 
to act as runners and forward agents. 

The first day down some of these men were taken on a 
tour of inspection forward of battalion headquarters. In 
the smashed village of Fenneviller they were caught by 
Bosche harrassing fire. They dropped into a ditch by the 
side of the road, but they saw a medical captain and a 
doughboy seriously injured, and another doughboy killed. 
They found the ditch comfortable until the Bosche had 
had enough. 

When they reported at headquarters that afternoon 
with a message from the infantry their attitude was pro- 
phetic. They had flung off the shadow of the disaster 
they had witnessed. They were elated because they had 
received their baptism of fire. Little Michel of the First 
Battalion came up grinning. He called to his friends. 

"Say, boys. This chicken's been under fire. Gee! 
It was great." 

A spirit of frivolity colored the triumph of the little 
party. A soldier removed his tin hat, pointing to a deep 
dent in the side. 

"Pretty close one that!" 

A snort of disgust from one of his companions. 

" Saw him myself. He took an axe to it." 



XIII 
BARRAGES AND RAIDS 

In Lorraine, however, liaison with the infantry was 
never the bugbear we had feared. One had to be diplo- 
matic. The gravest danger lay in a slip there. 

We had, as a matter of fact, forward guns nearer the 
Hun than infantry battalion headquarters. We were 
ordered to place these as soon as we were in position. They 
were called pirate guns. Their code name was, appro- 
priately, the goat. Their mission was to deliver haras- 
sing fire, to snipe at fleeting targets, to safeguard the bat- 
tery positions from sound and flash ranging by making it 
necessary to fire only barrages from them. In other words 
the pirate gun went into action with its eyes open. The 
Hun could spot it by sound or flash ranging. The Hun 
did. Those guns were always shelled more or less. 

Battery A sent in the first pirate gun for the First Bat- 
talion under command of Lieutenant Ellsworth Strong. 
The emplacement was an excellent one in the cellar of a 
ruined house in Fenneviller. It was heavily casemated. 
To guard against emergencies it was necessary to keep the 
limber and teams at hand in a stone stable. 

The Second Battalion pushed its gun forward to a 
French emplacement in a piece of woods. Lieutenant 
Watson Washburn took it up. 

We wanted to keep an ofiicer with each of these pieces. 
We had too few. It was necessary to put them in charge 
of non-commissioned officers. It was a good thing. 
The results increased the confidence of the ofiicers in their 
enlisted assistants. 

147 



148 HISTORY OF SOStla FIELD ARTILLERY 

Both of these positions were shelled. Fenneviller got it 
nearly every day. It was the custom when the music 
started to take the men off to a flank and keep them there 
until the concert was over. 

Later the Second Battalion put out a piece from Battery 
F. 

Another phase of organization concerned the observa- 
tories. To be serviceable they had to run according to a 
perfect system. Conduct of fire was only a short side of 
their usefulness. Rocket signals from the infantry were 
relayed through them. Scouts sat at the instruments all 
day watching for signs of enemy activity and for fleeting 
targets. Minute watchfulness will often locate enemy 
positions and observatories; will indicate to a certain ex- 
tent his immediate intentions. 

There was always an officer at each battalion observa- 
tory, and at the regimental one, far back behind Neuf 
Maisons. Battle maps were carefully marked. Dead 
space and visibility maps were made, and elaborate pan- 
oramic sketches. Anything observed on the terrain could 
be reported by its coordinates. 

Our organization was good, but the question of rocket 
signals disturbed it always. It seemed simple enough 
in the beginning. Heaven knows why it wasn't always. 
We placed at each observatory a circle on which the limits 
of our sector were fixed. When a rocket went up an in- 
dicator was turned so that it pointed to the burst. That 
showed us at once whether or not the rocket was intended 
for us. The rocket guard was always on duty. 

There were very few rocket signals — one for each of the 
various barrages, one for short firing, another for gas, but 
among the higher officers there seemed to be a diversity 
of opinion as to which signal should indicate what. It 
gave the men in the front line lots of fun guessing what 
signal to use in an emergency, and the men in the obser- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 149 

vatories an equal pleasure gambling on what was wanted 
when a rocket appeared. 

The system was altered frequently. That's where the 
confusion lay. One morning during a reconnaissance of 
the front line a captain of infantry asked our advice. He 
ran through a batch of orders and memoranda. He flung 
up his hands. 

"If I should need a normal barrage to-night," he said, 
" I honestly don't know what I ought to send up. Any- 
one of three rockets might be right — or wrong." 

Such a situation could not be tolerated. Our officers 
in liaison with the infantry did what they could. Both 
branches were equally anxious. There's enough danger 
in a rocket signal anyway, and that is no reflection on the 
doughboy. An inexperienced non-commissioned officer 
with a small squad in an exposed and lonely place, when 
he becomes aware of danger or fancies it, wants help in a 
hurry. He may in his anxiety send up the first thing that 
comes to hand, or everything he's got. Or in the dark he 
may easily mistake a rocket. The artillery must sense 
such mistakes. When signals are changed too frequently 
it requires a clairvoyant. 

A new order came down, settling the matter. There 
would be a rehearsal of the new signals that night. 

The telephone officers had arranged a system of barrage 
calls by projector with the infantry. While the rehearsal 
was in progress that and the telephone were the only means 
open to the infantry to cry for help. The Hun didn't 
catch on and attack. The rehearsal proceeded peace- 
fully. It was like a pleasantly conservative display of 
fireworks. The telephone system was given every con- 
ceivable test. Runners were sent breathlessly from or- 
ganization to organization, and to and from the infantry. 
Bicycle messengers tore along the dark roads. Every- 
thing worked. Towards midnight we talked it all over 



150 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

and went to bed with a sense of security that had hitherto 
lacked. 

That's the way things go in war. Within an hour we 
were awakened by our first real emergency. And there 
was plenty of confusion that the night's display had not 
accounted for. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson's telephone buzzed. The 
officer at the First Battalion observatory was on the line. 
A red rocket, he said, had just gone up from the infantry. 
He had repeated it to the batteries. A red rocket under 
the new system called for a barrage on the line of resis- 
tance. It was not, therefore, to be fired without confir- 
mation by telephone. Yet those at the observatories were 
certainly under the impression that they had been told to 
pass red rockets directly on to the batteries. Our line of 
resistance was full of men, happily asleep. 

It was one of those times when the switchboard is busier 
than one on the stock exchange during a panic. Colonel 
Stimson got to work. He put in calls for all three bat- 
teries at once. He wanted infantry battalion headquar- 
ters, too, to find out what the emergency was, for certainly 
there had been a mistake in the rocket. Our officer with 
the infantry wanted him. The battery commanders had 
judgment. They wanted him too, to find out why the 
red rocket had been relayed to them. Regimental head- 
quarters wanted the battalion commanders. The regi- 
mental observatory was in the same case. It was neces- 
sary to report to three outside stations that a barrage was 
to be fired. 

Meantime, while waiting for the battery commanders 
to respond we listened, apprehensive, for the sound of our 
own guns, firing that short and murderous barrage. 

As has been said, the battery commanders had judg- 
ment. They didn't respond to the signal. Our operators 
were good enough for the stock exchange on a panic day. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 151 

They got the calls through. They put the battery com- 
manders on Colonel Stimson's wire as they came in until 
he was talking to all three at once. That situation was 
saved. But what the deuce did the infantry mean, jfiring 
a red rocket? They wanted something, and they wanted 
it in a hurry. It might mean anything from a small trench 
raid to the attack in force we always felt was a possibility 
in that thinly held sector. 

A captain back in pleasant Neuf Maisons evidently 
sprang at the worst. We had no time for him. Lieu- 
tenant Graham was on the telephone, calling from infan- 
try battalion headquarters. They hadn't been able to get 
anything from their front line. Infantry brigade took a 
hand. 

As far as we could get any satisfaction the infantry 
seemed to want the Negre barrage, a barrage similar to our 
so-called normal, but to the right. 

The battery commanders had the receivers at their ears. 
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson called the single word "Ne- 
gre." The guns spat. The rapidity of their fire filled 
the night woods with an evil, staccato crashing. And 
although it has taken moments in the telling, that response 
came in an amazingly swift period after the red rocket had 
awakened us. 

Infantry brigade headquarters took a hand again. They 
had had enough of the Negre. They wanted the normal. 
Two batteries were about through and finished before 
shifting. Another, a trifle behind, shifted nonchalantly 
in the midst of its firing. 

The Second Battalion was in much the same case. Its 
central boiled, too. Neuf Maisons informed it that the 
Huns were breaking through the center, and cried for the 
Chamois barrage. One battery was ready to respond 
to the red rocket, but was stopped in time. Another fired 
the Grand Bois, and then shifted to the Chamois. 



152 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"By gad!" the infantry said afterwards, "it was bully 
to hear those shells ripping over. Sounded eflScient and 
safe somehow." 

We smiled in a superior fashion. Why had they sent up 
their red rocket anyway? No one ever found out. As 
far as we could learn it spoiled the evening for everyone 
except the Germans. They seemed particularly peaceful 
that night. 

While the firing continued, the details were armed with 
the few rifles available, and runner relays were got out. 
But most of the men agreed with the infantry. It was 
worth staying awake to hear such a superior noise. 

When quiet descended upon the woods, except for some 
distant firing, a call came through from Battery C for an 
ambulance and the surgeon. Three men had been struck 
by shell splinters. 

That was our only material damage. But the night's 
work disturbed us. There was a vagueness about the 
whole proceeding. It intimated that the infantry was 
not in that close liaison with us that we conceived as neces- 
sary to success. And other sectors would offer nastier 
problems. 

Only one unpleasant incident followed this affair, a 
charge of short firing against one of our batteries. It was 
not pressed, because of the strain under which our under- 
oflBcered brigade was working. 

In view of the generally peaceful nature of the sector 
sleep was surprisingly scarce in Lorraine. We tried to do 
everything at once. We felt that a multiplicity of endless 
conferences was necessary. A man needs a clear head, 
especially when he is new at the game, to figure compli- 
cated corrections for modern artillery. 

Nor should it be forgotten that Paper Work had taken a 
new interest in us. We had foolishly imagined he would 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 153 




Draion by Capt. Dana, Battery A 

The mess line 

be left behind when it came to kiUing Huns. Absurd 
dream ! He stalked into our midst with a new confidence. 
He destroyed friendships. He threatened reputations. 

The morning report and the sick book were complicated 
by the fact that each organization had men in two or three 
places. The firing battery, for instance was at the posi- 
tion. The drivers and extra cannoneers were at the eche- 
lon several miles away» Communication between the 
two was seldom good. A few men would be at the obser- 
vatory, at a pirate piece, with the infantry, or on detail 
at battalion headquarters. Yet reports on these men 
must be consolidated and at regimental headquarters at 
the usual hour. 

There were reams of extra paper work. The war diary 
became a bogey. If, the men asked, they had to have any- 
thing of the sort, why not do away with all the other re- 
ports. For the war diary brought everything together,, 
positions, men, animals, casualties, rations, forage, am- 
munition. At the front where we had less time than we 
had ever had repetition haunted us. The information on 
that little war diary blank had to be collected from many 
sources, and the batteries had to have their figures to- 
gether by five in the morning, for battalion headquarters 
wanted them by six, and regimental headquarters insisted 



154 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

on receiving them by seven. That meant somebody had 
to sit up nights, and usually it was the battery commander. 

The figures didn't always come through on time. They 
couldn't understand that in Neuf Maisons. One makes 
no excuse for these delays. Those at the front were en- 
gaged in the biggest and most dangerous war in history. 
It is incredible, perhaps, that they should have been more 
interested in hurting the Hun and sparing their own men 
than in compiling innumerable neat figures that scarcely 
changed from day to day. It took some harsh words from 
Neuf Maisons to bring them to their senses. Paper work 
had to be fed, for regimental headquarters had many peo- 
ple whose only duty was to look after the thing. And 
Brigade was voracious, and Division was unappeasable. 

Then there was an observatory report in code to go down 
at 5 :30 A. m; a munitions report at 6.; another at 11 ; a third 
during the afternoon. There were firing reports, and 
supplementary observatory reports. 

In spite of all this, we did manage to annoy the Hun at 
times, and after a while we got enough system to run the 
thing after a fashion. 

Another ideal was shattered in Lorraine. At Souge 
they had told us that while supplies might be difficult to 
get there, we would need at the front only to telephone the 
echelon to have anything we needed brought up the same 
night. Our instructors had been at the front during a 
period of stabilized warfare with only a handful of Ameri- 
cans on whom our entire service of supplies had been con- 
contrated. Conditions had altered when we got in. There 
were more Americans, and wairfare was no longer stabil- 
ized. Echelons were further back, and roads were not so 
well protected as they had been. Actually the material 
didn't exist to satisfy everybody. Yet we were absolutely 
dependent on equipment. We learned, therefore, to be 
economical, to improvise, to salvage. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 155 

Camouflage was one of our chief needs. We got enough 
flat tops to, take care of the batteries, but we needed pro- 
tection for ammunition dumps, wireless stations, the ob- 
servatories, the entrances to command posts and positions. 
We made a careful study of camouflage in Lorraine, and 
the experience we had there was invaluable in Champagne 
and the Argonne. 

When we were left in complete possession we found a 
number of fresh tracks that had to be covered up. The 
springs were danger points. Water is heavy, and men 
want to carry it by the shortest route. We covered such 
places with fresh cut foliage, and established penalties that 
kept us all in the desired ways. For larger work, such 
as entrances to positions, we used small trees to supple- 
ment our insufficient nets. 

The engineers helped all they could, but they had many 
organizations to look after. They gave us what material 
they had for our dugouts, which progressed day by day. 
We needed gas proof curtains, and got them somehow. A 
sly spirit developed here and there. A man who got much 
needed material usually went around with an expression 
that connoted: 

"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies." 

And one watched carefully what one had got. 

While all this work of organization continued we paid 
some attention to our more strictly military affairs. One 
does not recall the number of supporting barrages we 
figured for one purpose or another, and never fired. It 
was splendid practice, but the futility of it depressed us. 
Things didn't always come off as one planned in Lorraine. 
The show for which Battery A had been rushed into the 
line had never got beyond paper. That wasn't the only 
case. 

No one in the regiment is likely to forget Sunday, July 
28th. We figured a box barrage for a raid that day. We 



156 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

were a good deal concerned about it, for we had been told 
it would be a daylight raid whose object was the bringing 
back of prisoners. Capt. Barrett of the infantry would 
be in command of fifty men. It seemed a hazardous un- 
dertaking to us. We knew that the most accurate fire 
would be necessary. That noon we were informed that we 
would not fire. Yet the raid would go on. 

Between two and three o'clock we heard machine guns, 
and the popping of grenades. The rest is history. 

Eighteen men, we were told, came back, just two of 
them unhurt. Capt. Barrett and the rest were killed or 
made prisoners. Evidently the secrecy which had elim- 
inated the artillery, had failed to mystify the Huns. 

Many other raids were projected and died. There was, 
too, the usual crop of rumors. You would hear after night- 
fall that the Huns were going to attack before dawn, and to 
hold yourself in readiness. You sat up all night, waiting 
for the first guns, and as a rule, nothing happened. Some- 
times, as you waited, sleepless, you almost wished for the 
real thing. Our officers in liaison with the infantry were 
lavish with these rumors. It is inevitable that the infantry 
should get its wind up, and one must take its fancies as 
seriously as its facts. 

False gas alarms were more annoying than anything 
else. You can't fool with a gas alarm, for discipline's sake, 
even though your judgment tells you the presence of gas 
at a given place at a given time is impossible. 

You would hear far in the distance towards the front 
line three rifle shots in quick succession. They would be 
repeated nearer. Steadily they would drift back, exigent, 
uncompromising, accompanied usually by the jarring 
screech of gas horns. Weary men would turn over and 
groan. Our own alarm would belch, and you would strug- 
gle into your stifling respirator, and give up all idea of sleep 
until you got the all clear. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 157 

It may as well be said now that where gas was infinitely 
more plentiful we weren't so conscientious. We had too 
much work to do, and we formed the habit of trusting our 
own noses. 

After one of these alarms the whole world would seem to 
lie awake and ask for trouble. A screech owl would set a 
dozen alarms going, A runner would tear in from the in- 
fantry, gasping in his mask. He'd got a whiflF of some- 
thing on the road, and the wind was blowing in our direc- 
tion. 

The men at the echelon usually wore their masks in the 
alert position when they came up. That was proper, and 
they had to put up with it for only a few hours at a time. 
They had become strangers to us. Often we envied the 
more comfortable conditions under which they lived. They 
appeared at the front only by night when they brought 
up rations and ammunition. 

No one coveted that side of their job. Registered roads 
don't make for contented travel. 

The drivers announced their approach by shouts and a 
cracking of whips. The details rushed to the entrance 
to the position. The contents of the G. S. carts or the 
fourgons were unloaded and carried away with anxious 
haste. The drivers would chat with the cannoneers for 
awhile. Now and then a nearby battery would cut in, 
and the horses would grow restless. Then the drivers 
would mount and rattle off again to the remote and de- 
sirable woods they inhabited. 

That's the way our rations came to us. Food, too, 
brought its new problems at the front. 

A book might be written in praise of the army cook. 
His name, as everyone knows, is no stranger to the cas- 
ualty lists. His devotion to his work was nearly fanatic. 
Others might falter or straggle by the road. The cook 
clung to his rolling kitchen or his field range with pathetic 



158 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

devotion. And always, quite naturally, I dare say, he 
craved to build fires. Flame became to him a sort of god, 
and its resultant smoke was incense from an altar. The 
rest of us couldn't look at it that way. Smoke was as 
dangerous as the flash of our guns. For the enemy it was 
a banner, advertising our positions. 

As long as wood was dry we could manage to keep the 
cooks at their devotions, not without benefit to ourselves; 
but in damp, chilly weather the wet wood was too much 
for our experimental smoke screens. It was frequently 
necessary to scatter and extinguish fires while the cooks 
stood by with an air of witnessing a sacrilege. 

Fortunately it didn't rain much in Lorraine, and we were 
sufficiently far back to make fires practicable most of the 
time. We weren't destined to fare so well again until the 
close of the war. 

Nor did we dream we would be left in Lorraine for long. 
The fighting was taking a new turn, that destined to be its 
final phase. We had been rushed into the line. So, it 
developed presently, would we be rushed into the hottest 
battle of the war at the war's supreme strategic point. As 
the truth faced us more and more frankly we reviewed our 
slight training, our mistakes on this front, and we asked 
ourselves if we were ready. 

The powers were in no mood to consider such things 
meticulously. We were a regiment, and we could shoot, 
and so we were needed. 

We had erected our wireless station on the hill above 
battalion headquarters, and from it the communiques 
slipped down to the command post, unoflQcially but vividly. 
Newpapers, a trifle stale, came up at night from the eche- 
lon. So, after a fashion, we kept in touch with the vast 
workshop of the western front. We could see there roughly 
the modeling of our immediate future. 

We read of the Hun's last great offensive on the side of 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 159 

the Chateau Thierry saheut. We shrank from a repeti- 
tion of the anxious days at Souge when Paris had been 
menaced. That menace seemed to exist again, ugHer 
than ever. But all at once the spirit of the news altered. 
Foch's brilliant counter attack was under way. And as 
green American troops had stood with smiling ease and 
confidence on the defensive against those vicious thrusts 
of May and July, so now they were tearing forward with 
the French, laughing and singing as they went, killing 
Huns and dying themselves with a courage superb and in- 
different. 

Chateau Thierry came back to France, and many 
smaller towns. The Huns were going out of the salient 
like water from a pressed bulb. Fere-en-Tardennois, their 
base of supplies, was threatened, had been entered by 
American troops. The allies stood in front of Fismes, 
were in the city. Except for a few outposts the enemy 
was between the Vesle and the Aisne. 

Rumors thickened into fact. We were to move almost 
at once. No one shirked the fact that we would probably 
be thrust into that vast, sanguinary, and decisive battle. 

Battery B offered a complication. On July 15th Cor- 
poral Samuel W. Telling was sent to the field hospital in 
Baccarat, and back to us drifted the dread word typhus. 
The battery would be quarantined and the most minute 
sanitary precautions would be taken throughout the rest 
of the regiment. Except for its officers. Battery B was 
passed through the delousing station, and placed in shelter 
tents in the woods near Baccarat. Yet the battery could 
not conceivably abandon its share in the missions assigned 
to the regiment. A detail of cannoneers, drivers and tele- 
phone men were sent from each battery to Lieutenant 
Montgomery, and in his stride, as you might say, he welded 
them together so that his work suffered no interruption. 

At the echelon, however, things didn't go so well. The 



160 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




—rA 



officers there were very 
few. This influx of green 
drivers added much weight 
to their aheady great bur- 
den. When the regiment finally pulled out 
some property was left, paper work was in- 
volved, the colonel was annoyed, and there 
was a good deal of harsh language about. 
From a broader point of view, however, the 
meeting of this emergency by Battery B was 
an extraordinary accomplishment. 

The situation was a little relieved about 
this time by the arrival of two officers, fresh 
from Saumur. Second Lieutenant Charles F. Wemcken 
was assigned to us by order of July 10th and was sent to 
Battery C. Second Lieutenant Charles F. Perry was as- 
signed by order of July 20th and was sent to Battery B, 
while Lieutenant Robinson was shifted from B to C with 
which organization he fought with pronounced success 
until the armistice. " 

Another encour- ;. 

agement came in a 
telegram for Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel 
Stimson. An ex- 
traordinary ex- 
ception had been 
made in response 
to his plea. We 
would soon have 
Captains Reed, 
Ravenel, and De- 
lanoy back. On 

the other side we Dmvmhy Corporal Roos and Private Enroth 

lost definitely A three-cornered fight 



%-» 




HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 161 

First Lieutenant Watson Washburn who was transferred 
to a staff job at Corps headquarters; and First Lieutenant 
Paul Pennoyer, who, while on a temporary mission from 
Souge, had been given a corps staff job, too. 

The Hun probably had got some of our rumors. At 
least he was extremely attentive during our last days in 
Lorraine. Nearly every night now we got some kind of 
an alarm from the infantry, and we retaliated by planning 
many coups de main, ordered by infantry brigade head- 
quarters, few of which materialized. 

One morning towards the end we were awakened by a 
heavy bombardment. Shells were bursting close to the 
First Battalion command post. Either the Hun was 
registering to transport directly on us, or he was after 
Nenette. 

Lieutenant Brassell was at Nenette with Corporals 
Tucker and Goldberg, and Private Braun. Lieutenant 
Brassell telephoned down while we snatched a bite of 
breakfast, and, to all appearances, dismissed our uncer- 
tainty. 

"I think they're bracketing Nenette, sir." 

We settled our tin hats on our heads and climbed the 
hill. The arriving swish of the shells and the noisy bursts 
were not comfortable. With each burst, close at hand, 
little volcanoes of jet black smoke sprang out of the pretty 
wheat field. 

Thirty odd projectiles fell over and short of Nenette 
and to either side. There the show ended. Nenette had 
not been touched. We tried to assure ourselves that all 
we had got were overs intended for an anti-aircraft battery 
near the Pexonne road. Yet Nenette was always an an- 
xious place after that, and we held ourselves ready at the 
first alarm to shift to the alternative observatory among 
the birch tops. And we endeavored again to find other 
points suitable for observatories near the front line. 



162 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

During one of these reconnaissances Colonel Stimson 
came upon an observatory unique in conception and treat- 
ment. It is doubtful if the war produced anything of the 
sort more admirable. 

We were on a defiladed road immediately behind the 
infantry front line. To the right was a hill, thick with tall 
pine trees. A fundamental protection of the place was 
its patent antagonism to terrestrial observation. You 
can't observe through pine trunks and heavy foliage. But 
the French had got around that. They had gone above 
the foliage and without using the common expedient, 
which sooner or later gives itself away, of building a plat- 
form in the trees. They had constructed a huge new 
tree. They had a tower raised from similar trunks, and 
covered with the same foliage. You could stand within 
a few feet of it and remain unsuspicious of its existence. 
You climbed many ladders to the observatory at the very 
top. There you had a sense of Peter Pan come true. You 
swayed in the breeze. And you looked almost directly 
down into the Hun lines. 

The infantry was in possession and we went back to 
Nenette and our poor makeshift. 

On July 30th French officers appeared at the command 
posts and informed us they were going to take over, begin- 
ing the next night. These men had just come out of the 
great battle. We, who suspected an immediate entrance 
into that which they had left, listened breathlessly to their 
talk of unheard of artillery concentrations, of long cas- 
ualty lists, and of a supreme exhaustion. 

"Formidable!" was their favorite word. 

"You've neaver dreamed of the noise and the effect of 
their barrages," they said. "Formidable!" 

One glanced about our pleasant woods. He sighed 
contentedly. 

"It is tranquil here. A sector for Un pere defamille." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 163 

In spite of ourselves there was a httle envy in our hearts. 

Certainly the Bosche guessed something was going on. 
We had known all along that he had control of the air in 
Lorraine. His planes were constantly overhead, and the 
bell like note of the archies was with us much of the day 
and night, and there were nearly always white clouds in 
the air undetermined by the weather. Still Jerry had 
not been very aggressive. French planes had been up 
and given us one or two reglages undisturbed. The night 
of July 30th, however, the Huns came over in force loaded 
with bombs. Unquestionably they fancied the relief was 
under way that night. 

A huge ash can dropped beside the Battery F position. 
The force of the detonation knocked Lieutenant Derby 
down, and spattered a dozen men with dirt and twigs. 
By an incomprehensible good fortune the hot, ugly pieces 
of metal touched no one. 

Another big one landed in the field back of Nenette, 
and sprinkled fragments all about the observatory. That 
was near enough to the command post to make it advisable 
to get the men in the dugouts. Then the planes turned 
and went back to Germany, sprinkling their foul drop- 
pings as they went. We escaped, but there were casualties 
close by in Ker Arvor woods. 

The next day our formal orders arrived Two pieces, 
from each battery, except B, whose position would not be 
taken over by the French, would be relieved that night. 
The whole of B and the remaining guns of the other batter- 
ies would go out on the night of August lst-2nd. 

The first guns out would go to the echelon and wait 
there until the next night when they would join the last 
guns which would proceed without stopping at the echelon 
to the division regrouping area two marches away. The 
Huns were evidently satisfied with what they had done a 
night too soon. The relief was undisturbed. 



164 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Battery B again presented a special problem. Since 
its position was not to be taken over by the French it was 
necessary that its plant be kept intact until the last mo- 
ment. Yet it could not delay to the point of losing its 
place in the column. There were miles of wire to salvage 
and much equipment to be packed at the very last. Lieu- 
tenant Montgomery managed it, and pulled out on time. 

Lieutenants Camp and Fenn remained behind with the 
two French groups for twenty-four hours to induct them 
into the mysteries of the sector. The French weren't 
exigent. Half a morning served to organize them com- 
pletely. Again one was forced to admire the way they 
achieved the completest results with a minimum of effort. 

The first night of the relief Lieutenant- Colonel Stimson 
left the regiment never to return to it. A telegraphic 
order had reached him that afternoon, instructing him to 
report to America for duty with the Field Artillery there. 
We watched him drive away that night with a sense of 
grave loss. Afterwards we heard that he had been made 
a full colonel and given command of a new regiment in 
training at home. The armistice came before that regi- 
ment could sail. 



XIV 
THE FIRES BEYOND CHATEAU THIERRY 

OtTR movement from the Baccarat positions was not as 
simple as we had expected. The road for its entire length 
was perfectly visible to Hun airmen, so it was advisable 
to march at night. The column was late starting, and it 
crawled, as such columns do, on traffic laden roads. Our 
schedule called for a bivouac at Magnieres during the 
day of August 2nd. But it was long after daylight when 
the regiment arrived, anxiously glancing aloft; and by the 
time horses and men were settled the hour of departure 
was at hand. 

Again the roads were packed, and progress was snail- 
like. It was nearly noon of the 3rd before the column, 
dusty and tired, entered its regrouping area on the Moselle. 
We hadn't imagined the movement of a single division 
could be so complicated and tedious. 

That march, however, was not without its valuable im- 
pressions. For the most part it lay through the district 
of Lorraine, destroyed by the Germans during their retreat 
after the battle of the Couronne de Nancy, the eastern 
phase of the battle of the Marne. The smashed villages 
were now sketchily inhabited, and the fields were under 
cultivation again, but about this resurrection still clung an 
appearance and an odor of death. 

Our own area was just beyond high tide of the Huns. 
To us after that jom-ney it was impressively undisturbed 
and peaceful. We felt that our ugly carriages parked in 
fields along the Moselle were out of place in such a 
landscape. 

165 



166 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Regimental headquarters and the Second Battahon were 
at Bainville. The First Battahon was at Mangonville, 
two kilometers to the south. The Headquarters and Su- 
ply Companies were in and about the charming chateau 
of Menil Mitry, three kilometers to the east of Bainville. 

Significant changes were announced here. Among them 
was the transfer of General Rees, who had commanded 
the brigade, to other duties, and the appointment of Colo- 
nel Manus McClosky, soon to be made a brigadier general, 
to replace him. For a few days Colonel Doyle, as senior 
colonel remaining with the brigade, was in command. 
There was a feeling in the air that the changes wouldn't 
stop there. 

Captain Dana, of course, was again in temporary com- 
mand of the First Battalion. Captain Reed reported 
back from Souge on the first day and took over his duties 
of battalion adjutant while Lieutenant Klots went back 
to the Headquarters Company. These two officers set to 
work with a will to get the battalion ready for the serious 
work just ahead. 

Captain Mitchell was transferred from Battery F to the 
Field and Staff as adjutant of the Second Battalion. Lieu- 
tenant Derby took command of Battery F. 

We had expected two days in this regrouping area. 
They stretched into four, and no one was sorry for the de- 
lay. It was pleasant there, and we had a great deal to do. 
We settled down to straightening out the tangled paper 
work situation. We made more complete than before the 
divorce of the three details from the Headquarters Com- 
pany. Men, animals, and equipment were reported to 
regimental and battalion headquarters, and were assigned 
to organizations for travel and rations. The Battery B 
men, released at last from quarantine, reported back. 

We were ready when the order came to march on the 
mornings of August 6th and 7th. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 167 

Regimental Headquarters, the remnant of the Head- 
quarters Company, and the Second BattaHon proceeded 
to Charmes on the 6th, where they entrained. The First 
Battahon and the Supply Company entrained at Einvaux 
on the 7th. 

This movement was unlike the one from Souge. There 
a brigade had had a week to entrain. Now from a small 
section an entire division was going out practically in a 
single day. While there were a number of points of de- 
parture the congestion at each was such that a careful 
schedule had to be made and followed. 

Each battery broke park and took the road at a stated 
moment. It arrived at its entraining point at a given 
time. It fed and watered according to the clock. We 
passed large parties of our doughboys manoeuvering in 
the fields while they waited their turn at the trains. They 
interested us. We intrigued them. Their glances fol- 
lowed the long, overladen column from which the sleek 
snouts of the pieces, escaping from burdens of forage and 
equipment, peered at them encouragingly. 

The Supply Company was off first. Battery A com- 
menced entraining at 2 o'clock and was completely loaded 
at 3 :30. Before the train had pulled out the head of Bat- 
tery B was on the ramp. Before B had gone C appeared 
and was ready to load. 

At Charmes there was a similar precision of movement. 

We were surprised to learn how much we had profited 
by our one previous experience. The drivers made short 
work of refractory animals. The carriages seemed to roll 
into their places on the flats automatically. 

These days were warm, and such speed makes men 
thirsty. There was a Httle Y. M. C. A. hut on the ramp. 
When the job was complete the men were allowed to line 
up for a glass of raspberry syrup and water, and a limited 
quantity of chocolate, cakes, and tobacco. 



168 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Not until the trains had left did any one know the pro- 
jected destination of the regiment. That is, we had moved 
under sealed orders. Before the departure of his train 
each battery commander had received an envelope with a 
typewritten command that it was not to be opened until 
he had passed a certain station. Inside each envelope 
was a rough engineers' map of the district North of Paris — 
a map covered with significant names — and a small type- 
written slip of paper which said : 

"You will detrain at Nanteuil-le-Houdin." 

We spotted it eagerly on our maps. Its location indi- 
cated to us that we might either go in with the British, or 
swing more to the east through Soissons. There was an- 
other possibility. Were we going to lie in reserve behind 
the lines? Didn't the powers think us good enough for the 
big show, except in an emergency? 

Whatever the original intention it was altered the next 
day, as everyone remembers. 

Except for the customary struggles with a few unruly 
animals the trip was tame enough, but there were plenty 
of reminders the next morning that we were close behind 
the busiest portion of the front. We saw many spreading 
nets of tracks, crowded with flat cars on which reposed 
battle-scarred cannon, camouflaged tanks, trucks, auto- 
mobiles. On everything the deep wounds of shell fire could 
be seen. We passed huge gun parks, ammunition dumps, 
airdromes, dreary and interminable hospitals. 

We gazed at such sights with a depressed interest, and 
wondered if we would crawl through the outskirts of Paris. 
Then the trains halted shortly after noon at a small sta- 
tion, and an officer climbed aboard each one, presenting 
the commander with a new envelope. Everyone guessed 
as soon as he saw it that our destination had been altered. 

There was a map inside — a 1-80,000, marked Meaux. 
And there was an order, brief and to the point. The 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 169 

division would detrain at Coulommiers and nearby sta- 
tions, and on August 10th would commence a movement 
forward into the zone occupied by the First United States 
Army Corps. The infantry would be moved by motor 
busses to be furnished by the French. The artillery would 
go on its own wheels and legs. 

Within half an hour after receiving that order the bat- 
teries were detraining. 

Battery A detrained in the yards at Coulommiers; Bat- 
teries B, C, and F at Chailly Boissy; Batteries D and E, 
and the Headquarters and Supply Companies at St. 
Simeon. 

There were huge evacuation hospitals at Coulommiers 
through which thousands of Americans, gassed or wounded 
in the Chdteau Thierry salient, were passing at that time. 
We listened, fascinated, to the gossip of hospital orderlies 
about the eflfects of big shell fire and concentrated phosgine 
and mustard gas. 

The sky was full of aeroplanes. Constantly they circled 
overhead. We tried to impress on each other that, al- 
though, they were our own planes, discipline must be 
maintained as if we were at the front. The bugle, con- 
sequently, blared alarm after alarm, and our work was re- 
tarded. Still we were willing that it should be, for in our 
ignorance we believed this great flock of airmen behind 
Chateau Thierry meant that we had control of the air, 
that, therefore, our offensive and defensive dispositions 
would be made simpler and safer on this nasty front. 

Battery A was billeted for that night and the next at 
the comfortable little village of St. Germain-sous-Doue. 
Battery B went to La Loge Farm, Battery C to Epieds. 
Regimental Headquarters, the Headquarters and Supply 
Companies, and the Second Battalion were at the com- 
paratively large town of Done. 

Things had been fairly hectic on the Moselle, but that 



170 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

wasn't exceptional. Going into billets for a battery is 
always much the same problem, much the same mad strug- 
gle for a solution. And, when it's reached, the solution 
is always about the same. Yet invariably out of the con- 
fusion emerges a sort of order and comfort. Eventually we 
became more than ever like a great traveling circus whose 
discipline automatically repairs the mistakes of a poor ad- 
vance man. And that isn't intended as any reflection on 
our billeting officers and non-commissioned officers. They, 
as a rule, had too much to do, and they were restricted to 
too small an area by the advance agents of the division. 

Some towns had a better welcome for infantry than for 
artillery, but that fact didn't seem always to be appre- 
ciated. Besides billets for officers and men, the artillery 
needed ground suitable for extensive picket lines and gun 
parks, and no matter how suitable the ground you could- 
n't establish either near the front without overhead cover. 

Organizations, whether they arrived in the afternoon or 
during the dark hours, ran into much the same conditions 
in those billets north of Coulommiers. The billeting offi- 
cers couldn't be all over the district, so the non-commis- 
sioned aides, as a rule faced the battery commanders 
alone. 

One always experienced a quick sympathy for these un- 
fortunates. Invariably they glowed with a naive pride. 
They always produced careful lists, showing the billets 
available, and the number of men that could be housed in 
each. A battery commander going into billets, however, 
is only interested at first in two things. 

"The picket line and the gun park ! " he cries as he meets 
his man. 

Perhaps the glowing advance agent has let the Battery 
slip past these vital points, and it may be necessary to turn 
the entire column around by sections in a narrow street. 
Battery commanders never take to that kindly, nor do 




CO 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 171 

tired drivers. It is seldom that the places chosen for the 
picket line and the park please. The ground is swampy, 
or there isn't enough room, or the tree trunks are too small, 
or 

The most indifferent commander can find something 
lacking in the most perfect park or line. 

The advance agent, of course, isn't to blame for these 
short-comings. The town major, as a rule, has given him 
no choice. 

"That's it," he has said. "Take it or leave it." 

But a battery commander doesn't analyze causes when 
he is displeased by effects. He decides darkly to make the 
best of things. He considers his disappointed advance man. 

"All right," he says. "The thing's impossible. You 
ought to have done better than this, Smith, but it's getting 
dark. We'll make it do. Undoubtedly you've arranged 
to billet the drivers in a group close to the picket line, and 
the cannoneers by the park. Explain your distribution 
to the first sergeant." 

If the advance agent is a man of parts he salutes, seeks 
the first sergeant, curses, and with him arranges some kind 
of a compromise. If, on the other hand, he flushes and 
stammers forward with facts about some of the billets be- 
ing large and some small, and everything scattered through 
the town and the surrounding Country, he usually tries the 
battery commander's patience too far. Then he sees 
himself as others see him. 

As soon as the animals are arranged for, and he is cer- 
tain his men will have some kind of a lodging, the battery 
commander turns his attention to the kitchen. The site 
of this, too, has been more often than not an arbitrary 
selection of the town major's. It is nearly always in a 
farmyard, redolent and wet with manure, and thronged 
by an assortment of unclean animals. 

It is at this point that the billeting non-commissioned 



172 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

officer generally goes back to his section a sadder and a 
wiser man. He mutters over his lists and his wrongs. He 
tells everybody that he has done just what he was told to 
do by those above him in rank. He has, probably. But 
no one is sympathetic. The customary response of his 
friends is: 

" Can it, will yeh ? It's a heluva billet yeh gave me." 

That detail became more unpopular than kitchen police. 
It reduced corporals to the ranks. It made officers lose 
faith in their men, and men in themselves. You see, you 
usually billet at the close of an exhausting day. Every- 
thing about you is strange. Often black night covers 
the world. And, more than the rest, the whole battery is 
hungry. 

No meal tastes so good as the first one in billets. You 
sit around on the grass or a stone wall, eating with the 
comfortable assurance that for a few hours no violent ef- 
fort will be demanded of you, that in a little while you will 
probably be able to go to sleep. Or, if it is in colder 
weather, maybe you carry your dinner or your supper to 
your new home where a hospitable housewife gives you a 
corner by the fire and maybe crowns Corn Willy with fried 
potatoes or a piece of cake. 

Afterwards, except for the guard, and the few neces- 
sary details, everybody seeks his bed. You climb a lad- 
der into the loft of a house or a barn, centuries old. You 
find straw there, sometimes clean, sometimes not, but al- 
ways soft. You drop off to sleep with a healthy and 
abrupt unconcern scarcely known to civilian life. 

There was enough in the Coulommiers area to keep 
any but the weary awake. As we strolled to bed that first 
night we watched in the sky to the north vivid and end- 
less flashes spreading and contracting with a variety of 
intensities. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 173 

Somebody chuckled self-consciously. 

"Reckon the world has never seen such northern lights 
before." 

Judged by our experience of flashes in Lorraine it was 
clear that highest battle, even according to the standard 
of this war, raged up there. In a very few days we would 
be among the flashes. 

As you watched that pallid, violent display you strained 
your ears for appropriate sounds. But the night was si- 
lent, except for a distant and amorous song and the ryth- 
mical music of a breeze across the foliage. 

The song vibrated away, and the breeze fell. All night 
long before that distorted sky the silence was ironical. 



XV 
ACROSS THE MARNE TO NESLES WOODS 

More detailed orders reached us the next day. We 
would take the road Saturday, the 10th, and march thirty 
odd kilometers before the next morning to Chezy-sur- 
Marne. The next night we would cover approximately 
twenty kilometers to a point to be chosen near Courpoil. 
The third night we would complete our journey to Nesles 
Woods, which had recently been cleared of the enemy. 

We pored over our maps. The march would be a forced 
one. It would carry us through the heart of the salient. 
Chezy was only a few miles from Chateau Thierry. Cour- 
poil probably smoked from the fierce fighting it had 
witnessed. Nesles Woods lay between Fere-en-Tardenois 
and Fismes. 

We spent Friday getting ready. In our spare moments 
we wrote letters home. 

That afternoon we were summoned to brigade head- 
quarters in Done to meet the new brigade commander. 
He intimated the serious nature of our next step. After- 
wards Colonel Doyle gave the organization commanders 
an extended talk about aiming points and the identifica- 
tion of targets. 

Since it was understood we couldn't safely start our 
march before four o'clock the next afternoon, everyone 
hoped for a good sleep Friday night. The men needed it, 
but they didn't get it. About 9 o'clock regimental head- 
quarters stirred itself and began sending orders to the bat- 
talions by bicycle messengers. The first was to the effect 

174 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 175 

that we would be prepared to take the road by eight o'clock 
the next morning. That meant reveille around four 
o'clock. Other orders came to send teams and G. S. carts 
to various points to change and move equipment. It 
wasn't until 2 o'clock Saturday morning that the excite- 
ment subsided. Bicycle Messenger Montgomery came 
around then with a verbal order that we wouldn't move 
until the time we had been given originally, four o'clock 
in the afternoon. We took advantage then of what re- 
mained of the mutilated night. 

The regiment was to rendezvous at Doue. It would 
take its place in the brigade column on the national high- 
way beyond. So at four o'clock each organization mounted 
and pulled out of its comfortable billets. 

August smiled its best that afternoon. The cheerful 
countryside seemed reluctant to let us go. Natives watched 
us with emotionless faces. In their eyes we saw dull 
souvenirs of four years of departures. 

In the old days of pitched battles men walked from their 
bivouac directly into the obliterating shock of a fight 
whose duration was a matter of hours. Maybe that was 
simpler than to move as we did for three nights into a bat- 
tle apparently without end, with sights and sound of a new 
and peculiar brutality crowding each moment closer about 
us. 

We did get tired. 

During our wait at the rendezvous we drank hot coffee, 
and munched cold rations. When we turned into the 
straight national highway, flanked by huge lime trees, we 
could see the entire brigade stretching before and behind 
us. French and American trucks snorted past without 
end. 

The pleasant, warm sun sank lower. By twihght, on 
the outskirts of a town, we watched youths of the French 
1920 class, freshened after their day's training, walking 



176 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

in groups, and watching our dusty column out of curious 
eyes. Here and there one strolled by the side of a pretty 
girl, shyly silent because of this undesired publicity. 

They waved hesitant farewells. In the village little 
children shrieked after us : 

"Good, by! Good, by! Good-by!" 

The sun slipped away altogether. Night closed about 
us. By the last light we twisted through Epieds. The 
people gave us feeble cheers. But we paid little attention. 
We were already footsore. Even the mounted men, to 
save the animals, walked alternate hours. Our halts be- 
cause of the length of the column, had become extremely 
sketchy. Sometimes you missed them altogether, closing 
up a gap. And there were innumerable unexpected stops 
when you dismounted and were up and off again almost 
before your feet had touched the ground. 

Our feet weren't up to much. During the past month 
we had been either in the line or changing station. We 
were soft. But songs brightened our worm-like progress 
along the dark country roads. 

The night brought the flashes back to the sky ahead of 
us. They were not quite so pallid. They spread farther. 
They soared higher. They were streaked by ominous 
lines of ruddier flame. 

Always the traffic of supply ground past us, forcing us 
to the side of the road, struggling desperately forward to 
feed the fires. 

A cheery voice flashed bravely back at the burning sky. 

" Gonna be some little fight, boys ! " 

Another voice rose with a quavering, melancholy qual- 
ity. Its song was something about a girl waiting at home, 
waiting patiently and unselfishly for a man to come back 
out of the fires- 

The ranks fell silent. The voice died away. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 177 

Somewheres ahead a rolHng kitchen commenced to drop 
a trail of sparks. It wound, as the road twisted, hke an 
unbehevably long and phosphorescent serpent. 

It kept pace with us. After a time the odor of coffee 
floated back along the trail. Between midnight and the 
dawn we would know there was a jewel of a cook up there. 
But was it safe, this red, serpentine trail .5^ Are cooks 
ever safe near the front? Everybody saw the sparks. 
And everybody caught the aroma. The fires were still 
distant. Nobody disturbed the cook. The red serpent 
persisted until it was certain the coffee in the containers 
was hot and would stay so. 

We drank it between one and two o'clock, when we 
were halted for some time on a high ridge. The flames 
seemed nearer and brighter than they had been. Or per- 
haps it was because the night was so dark up there. Then 
for the first time we distinguished star shells. They sepa- 
rated themselves from the flashes so slowly and disap- 
peared so reluctantly that you couldn't be sure at first they 
weren't born of your imagination and your smarting eyes. 
You thought the first one, perhaps, was the Pleides, less 
distinct than usual. They all looked exactly like that, 
tiny constellations, blurred by the shifting glow ahead. 
But they were everywhere so you knew what they were. 

As we munched a sandwich or a cracker and sipped the 
hot, fragrant coffee everything impressed us as abnormally 
still. We missed the rumbling of the wheels, just silenced, 
and the rap of the horses' shoes on the road. In the be- 
ginning there was only the slow shuffling of feet in the dirt 
as the forms, detached a trifle from the night, by the 
flickering in the sky, formed a line by the rolling kitchen — 
that, and occasional dull clashing of mess cups. Then 
a man spoke, and after a time another. It was usually 
only some banal remark, dro^^med and forgotten at once 
in this flickering stillness. 



178 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"You're spilling it on my wrist." 

" God bless you for the chow, sergeant." 

Or from the sergeant : 

" Move on ! Do you want to delouse yourself in it? " 

Such aimless accents of the silence were forgotten at 
once. 

Out of the subsequent, pallid calm stole the voice of 
battle. 

Men shifted their feet uneasily. It was the first of the 
cannon mutter to reach us from the flames. A quick 
activity thrust it back again. 

"Prepare to mount!" 

"Mount!" 

"Forward yo-o-o-o " 

The orders came down the line, growing apparently out 
of nothing as the cannon mutter had done, reaching a 
climax in one's own mouth, dying away on the long drawn 
vowel of the last command. 

We were moving forward again, drawing an odd and 
comfortable companionship from our rumbling, rapping 
progress. 

At the scarcely perceptible birth of dawn we were wind- 
ing sleepily on the shoulder of another ridge which looked 
down on what might have been a long lake or a deep and 
gigantic river flowing between the hills. It was possible 
to guess, and here and there a man raised his head and 
stared. Someone spoke in a harsh whisper. 

"That's the valley of the Marne." 

He whispered because we were somnolent and unalert. 
The name possessed no dynamic power for us then. One 
fellow did manage : 

"Didn't know it was so blamed wide." 

The other offered to instruct him. 

"Oh, that's the mist." 

" You don't say? Good-night ! " 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 179 

Shoulders drooped again. 

"Ha-a-a-lt!" 

The command sang down the Hne hke a savage chant. 
The regiment dismounted. One by one men dropped 
over against the bank, and drifted into sleep, keeping a 
listless hand on bridles. The horses, weary too, for the 
most part stood with drooped heads, not even troubling to 
nibble the lush grass. Now and then one would wander 
indifferently from the feebly restraining grasp of his mas- 
ter. An officer would rebuke sleepily, consigning the care- 
less one to walk the rest of that stage. At such a time 
the world seemed drunk with sleep. 

A dim headlight pushed through the mist below — guid- 
ing one of the first trains, we guessed, to carry troops along 
the reopened Chateau Thierry line. 

The dawn strengthened. It grasped the fringes of the 
mist and lifted it slowly from the valley. A stream, like 
a ribbon, narrow and decorative, was strung across the 
fields. 

Tired eyes opened to gaze with an expression of dis- 
covery at the pleasant little river that twice had been 
wider than the ocean to Germany. 

We resumed our crawling. There was no longer any 
reason in mounting and dismounting. We would go ahead 
for a few paces, then stop again. An anxiety grasped the 
command to get somewheres beneath green trees before 
the light should grow much stronger. Then we saw the 
head of the column moving to the left to be swallowed by 




DratoH by Capt. Dana, Battery A 
On the march 



180 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

a large grove of trees. A sigh went up. We were nearly 
there. Each halt seemed longer than it was. We glanced 
upwards. We listened for aeroplanes. 

We, too, reached the fork. We turned and entered be- 
neath the friendly shrubbery. The chill of the night had 
disappeared before the mounting sun. 

As we parked an officer from headquarters ran about. 

"Keep everything covered up, and don't let anybody 
stand in open places. The Huns are watching these 
woods for bivouacs. 

Where carriages were parked in thinly roofed places we 
draped them with cut shrubbery. We started the ani- 
mals down a path behind a guide who knew where water 
was to be had. We got our paper work out of the way. 
We hurried the war diary to regimental headquarters 
which had been established in the deserted town of Chezy. 

The rolling kitchens smoked. Men forgot their weari- 
ness to form eager lines before them. Groups ate greedily 
among the trees. The forest was noisy with talk called 
from group to group. The Colonel arrived and approached 
a party of officers on a tarpaulin, making a stupendous 
breaMast in celebration of having brought men, animals, 
and carriages through a stage that had worried everyone. 

"Keep your seats, gentlemen," the Colonel said. "I 
want to congratulate you on the way you handled your 
paper work this morning." 

The group returned to its breakfast refreshed. A word 
of praise after such effort is a tonic. 

The illusion of a picnic, however, was never very con- 
vincing. The sunlight searched the woods, exposing 
souvenirs of the recent fighting. Half hidden by the 
underbrush were stained and eloquent garments. Here 
lay a Hun helmet, a neat round hole through the front. 
There was the stock of a rifle. 

Men picked such objects up curiously. They gathered 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 181 

them in httle heaps, convenient for transportation. They 
prepared for sleep. The sun seemed to laugh. 

That is the curse of night marches. You can't get a 
satisfactory sleep by day. There is a great deal to be 
done, that robs many men even of the opportunity to 
sleep. Guards must be posted. Kitchens must go as 
hard as ever. Animals must be more carefully cared for 
than when in billets or at an echelon. Equipment must 
be cleaned, and the damage of the previous night's march 
repaired. 

All these operations manufacture a noise that disturbs 
those who do get a chance to rest. But it is the sun that 
irritates the weary more than anything else. No matter 
how shady the place you choose, the sun will find it out 
sooner and later, will grin in your eyes, will inform you 
that it is no time to be sleeping. 

Maybe you move. Then a man shakes your shoulder, 
demanding information which he foolishly imagines you 
alone can furnish. 

If on such a march you can average three hours' sleep out 
of the twenty -four you are lucky and insensitive. 

In Chezy woods there were other disturbing factors. 
The men's feet had suffered. It was necessary to treat 
them. You stood in line for long periods waiting to get 
to the doctor. When you had been treated it was prob- 
ably dinner time. 

After dinner nearly everyone that wasn't on duty strol- 
led down the hill, through the grounds of a modern chateau, 
and so to the bank of the Marne. The water was dirty, 
and, if one stopped to think, sinister. The afternoon, on 
the other hand, was warm, and we didn't forecast many 
more opportunities in the near future to bathe. We filled 
the murky water with active, noisy bodies. On the shore 
mature men reproduced the antics of school boys. From 
across the Marne frowned a landscape stifled beneath the 



182 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

pestilential haze of war — a condition scarcely palpable, 
reminiscent of a land whose inhabitants have been swept 
down by some black plague. For there weren't so many 
ruins. There pervaded everything, fields, farm houses, 
villages, only this sense of desertion and a morbid un- 
health. It was like a picture from an artist whose melan- 
choly and diseased brain has retained of the visible 
world no more than a sense of form. 

All afternoon the activity about the banks mocked this 
oppressive landscape. From time to time strings of ani- 
mals were led down and watered. The antics of the bathers 
continued until dusk. 

A few of our horses did not respond that day. We were 
underhorsed anyway. A new fair started. Organizations 
swopped animals about so that no carriage should be left. 
That took time. Supper was a shadowy affair. We policed 
the bivouac. We lashed equipment to the carriages 
again. Souvenir hunters gazed at their stacks of trophies, 
shook their heads, and scattered the stuff about the woods. 

One man picked up a Hun helmet and beat with it 
thoughtfully against a tree. 

"Seems tough enough," he mused — "too darned tough." 

He flung it on the ground, thrust his hands in his pock- 
ets, and leaned against a tree. His attitude was, roughly, 
typical of everyone else's. The teams were harnessed. 
Everything was ready. We waited for the word to move 
out. 

The dusk had forced into the woods an unwelcome alter- 
ation. Instead of patches of sunlight, the grim souvenirs 
of battle scattered about determined the values of the 
picture. There was a chill in the air, too. One's sense of 
sleeplessness returned with the night. And the increasing 
darkness meant the resumption of those breathless pyro- 
technics in the north. 

A little fellow, crouched on a stump, his hands clasped 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 183 

about his knees, gazed straight ahead. His face was im- 
mobile. You didn't hke to look at it, because it seemed 
an expression of many more carefully guarded minds. You 
moved about, trying to throw the feeling off, this difficult 
conviction that the forest was crowded with homesickness. 

A man strolled up and put his arm about the little fel- 
low's shoulders. His voice came with understanding. 

"What's the matter, buddy?" 

The little fellow sprang upright as an animal is startled 
by the appearance of a hunter. He answered fiercely : 

"Matter! Nothing the matter." 

He burst into odd oaths, as if they might justify him. 
The other gave him a cigarette. 

Word came around that we were to be careful where we 
sat down to-night, for there would be always the danger 
of mustard gas. Other messengers appeared. We would 
cross the Marne on pontoon bridges at Chateau Thierry. 
Carriages would cross on one bridge with intervals of fifty 
meters. Individually mounted men would use another, 
dismounted men a third. An apprehension of shelling at 
the crossing from long range guns saturated these orders. 

The word to mount came with the last light. Whips 
cracked and horses strained forward. The carriages reeled 
drunkenly over roots and depressions. There were sway- 
ing escapes while men shouted warnings, put their shoul- 
ders to the wheels, and struck at the horses. Where the 
woods trail turned into the main road an officer sat his 
horse, repeating over and over again, like one reciting a 
piece. 

"Men may smoke, but must use automatic lighters. 
No matches will be struck to-night." 

Brakes set, we slid down a long, curving hill into the 
valley. The column moved faster this evening. A soft 
moonlight gave an air of mystery to the few empty farm 



184 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

houses we passed. Several groups of these suggested that 
we were on the outskirts of Chateau Thierry. But the 
road was longer than we thought. It was nearly midnight 
when we entered the city at last. Through a dark silence 
we became aware of a multiple activity. The streets were 
full of half seen figures that passed us without words. The 
place might have been a rendezvous of criminals, furtively 
intent on avoiding discovery. There were no lights. We 
could scarcely distinguish the jagged remains of walls, 
and here and there in the building line a fissure that we 
knew was the grave of a home. 

At the railroad the column was cut by the passing of a 
train, and the overanxiety of the military police, which 
closed the gates too soon. Beyond, teams tore through 
the dark to catch up, and men rode back and forth keeping 
in touch with divided units. 

In a narrow street close to the river more military police 
were stationed. Their suppressed voices were scarcely 
audible above the rumbling of the wheels on cobble stones 
as they repeated our instructions for crossing. Certainly 
the Hun wasn't so near ! 

We entered a wide place through the center of which the 
Marne flowed. More military police stood on each bridge 
nervously hurrying the crossing. But no shells fell. Our 
own progress on the planking drowned the sound of guns 
and the hill ahead was a curtain against the northern sky. 

We were over, but when we had climbed the hill above 
the town the voice and the gestures of battle became elo- 
quent again. The passage of the river seemed to have 
brought us much, much closer. The sky was a wavering 
sheet of flame, no longer wan. It spread and contracted 
with a yellow intensity. Star shells stood out against it 
clearly enough now. As the rumblings increased and 
diminished one could almost guess the caliber of the guns 
engaged. An enormous mass of artillery was concentrated 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 185 

up there. It was folly to try to sing against that greater 
song. The column forged stolidly ahead. 

We were in the heart of the salient now. Even by 
night the country was haggard. The Hun's departure 
had been a matter of a fiew days, and he had not neglected 
his reputation in leaving. 

We rode silently through village after village. They 
all shared a dreadful similarity. They were clusters of 
homes, roofless and with gashed walls. They were filled 
with an odor which made the air reluctant in one's lungs. 
It was compounded of stale gas, of lime, of ancient plaster 
and woodwork, suddenly crumbled. It forced on one an 
i npression of death, still warm. It suggested the proxi- 
mity of departing souls. There seemed to be a connection 
between this sense and the ghastly light that flickered over 
everything. 

Between these dead villages the open country stank, 
too. 

At times we were sheltered by shell screens, raised by 
the Hun for his own safety. 

Towards morning we munched sandwiches and crackers, 
but there was no hot coffee. The fires in all rolling 
kitchens had been ordered drawn. 

Shortly after this meal we turned to the right at Cour- 
poil, another slaughtered, empty, stinking town, and on a 
rough road ascended a long hill. The halts, as always 
before the long halt, became numerous and irritating. The 
road seemed interminable. In spite of the brief stage, 
and our earlier speed, daylight would probably catch us 
again, and the risk was greater here. Yet a little daylight 
might be a safeguard against this road which degenerated 
with each meter. Fourgons and escort wagons lurched 
dangerously. Why the deuce were we struggling so far 



186 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

from the main road anyway? We'd have to come back 
by dark again over this risky trail. And our horses were 
tired. The only excuse that occurred to us was that we 
were going to a particularly safe and convenient bivouac. 

As the east grew ruddy the flashes faded. We saw a 
fourgon on its side by the road. The horses stood by, 
gazing at it with rather a pleased air. Tired soldiers made 
unavailing efforts to get it up. 

"No sleep for those guys," we said pityingly. "They'll 
have to unpack everything, jack her up, and pack again." 

"Say, that must be a peach of a bivouac we're going to." 

It wasn't. 

Just ahead two large masses of forest barely detached 
themselves from the slow dawn. There was an open field 
between. Some of the batteries were already strung out 
along the edge of the woods. The rest of the column 
halted. A group of officers and men stood in the field, 
talking and gesticulating. One heard : 

"Who made the reconnaissance for this blasted thing?" 

There had been a reconnaissance the previous day, but 
something certainly had gone wrong. We asked eager 
questions. The woods in spite of their size were for the 
most part choked with underbrush, and the remainder was 
rough and honey-combed with infantry trenches. There 
wasn't room for the regiment under cover, and Hun planes 
might appear at any moment. 

"And those woods," you heard, "are full of dead 
things." 

Without calling attention to it we had all noticed the 
thickening of the nauseating odor of wholesale animal 
decay. 

"It's bad for the men." 

"The men have got to get used to it." 

"But it's better to see those things in the heat of ac- 
tion." 







y ^g 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 187 

That, however, wasn't the point. We had to get covered 
up before the Hght grew stronger. 

The Headquarters Company, and Regimental Head- 
quarters got sketchily concealed in one piece of woods. 
The larger part of the Second Battalion got in the other. 
The First parked its pieces on the edge and cut foliage 
with which it covered everything. Opposite, the Supply 
Company employed the same makeshift. 

The picket lines had to be placed inside. 

Those who entered the forest to locate these lines went 
softly. It was still night in there. You didn't want to 
stumble over unseen obstacles. You fancied that the 
woods were still inhabited by an army, which for the mo- 
ment slept. The trenches made angular scars between 
the trees — shallow, makeshift defences of the retreating 
Hun. Their floors were littered with gray blouses, hel- 
mets, round Hun caps, Mausers, grenades, belts of cart- 
ridges. Scattered between them were artillery ammuni- 
tion dumps, the shells in wicker containers, like wine bas- 
kets, or else in elaborate and expensive metal frames. As 
the light strengthened we saw quantities of rations which 
had been thrown away, gasolene tanks, pioneer tools. If 
there wasn't an army in the woods there was the equip- 
ment for one. That day if we wanted anything — gasolene, 
for example, for an automobile or a side-car, — we went 
through no formalities. 

" Go in the woods and get it," we said. 

And the seeker obeyed and got what he wanted. 

But in there the odor was poisonous. Everyone was 
warned not to prowl in the underbrush. 

As soon as the picket lines were established we went out, 
clinging to the edge of the woods, and almost at once the 
first Hun planes came over, but we were pretty well con- 
cealed, and they didn't trouble us. 

The question of water obtruded itself. By taking the 



188 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

water carts all the way down the hill water for the men 
could be drawn from a well in Courpoil. For the animals 
the best that was offered was a pond a mile away. Its 
banks were steep, so that the animals were watered in- 
dividually from buckets. The process was tedious. In- 
stead of watering three times that day we were lucky to 
struggle into the mud and out again twice. 

The lake wasn't any pleasanter than the woods. Scat- 
tered equipment littered its banks. Some of our men 
tried it for bathing. One or two of them cried out, and 
they all waded to shore, talking among themselves. When 
we asked what was the matter they looked sheepish. 

"The lake is full of dead Bosche," they said. 

There was a large farm house a few yards away. It had 
evidently been used for some kind of a headquarters. The 
garden had been trampled, and the fences broken down. 
In a corner was a new cemetery with rows of wooden 
crosses, made, we guessed, from packing cases. They 
marked American graves. We were glad they were so 
few. 

One man said brutally : 

"There are a lot of things they didn't bury around here," 

We practiced making our lungs do with a minimum of 
air. 

On the higher ground, among the deeper shell holes were 
many small and shallow ones. We knew they had been 
made by gas shells. Now and then you saw one whose 
bottom was yellow with the spewed mustard gas that had 
failed to volatilize. 

Everywhere was telephone wire, laid on the ground 
from position to position. There had been no time to 
salvage it. 

As we ate our late breakfast we noticed that the flies 
were worse than they had been anywhere else, even at 
Souge. And there was a strange variety — a big, blue 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 189 

nosed sort that fought to get at your food and, defeated, 
flew greedily back to the secrets of the underbrush. 

We ate, 'though, and we managed to sleep even in that 
woods. We failed to find in Courpoil forest, however, 
even the relaxation Chezy had offered. There was more 
to be done. The animals required more attention. There 
were more aeroplane alarms, and there was more danger 
of men being caught in the open and not standing still. 

That afternoon Captains Ravenel and Delanoy rejoined. 
They had left Souge some time before, but had been un- 
able to locate the regiment. Captain Ravenel, because 
he was senior, took command of the First battalion in 
place of Captain Dana. Captain Delanoy assumed com- 
mand of Battery F. 

We had with us two lame men who had failed to respond 
to treatment. A passing ambulance picked them up and 
carried them back to Chateau Thierry. The surgeon in 
charge gave us some cheerful gossip. 

"Some of your infantry went in yesterday," he said in 
an off-hand way, "and last night they sent out a lot of 
casualties. You won't want anything much hotter than 
you'll get up there." 

We thanked him, but we didn't press him to stay for 
supper. His gossip gave the persistent grumbling in the 
north a sharper threat. Yet, whatever the next day might 
hold, I don't think anyone regretted escaping from Cour- 
poil woods. 

We didn't dare budge until the dusk was thick. Then 
we tore our improvised camouflage from the carriages and 
formed in the shell-ploughed field for the final stage of our 
march into the Oise-Aisne battle. 

The last sunset glow fought for a time against the violent 
and unnatural dawn in the north. 

As always the fighting intensified with the night. The 
gun chorus reached thicker, heavier notes. Once a sheet 



190 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

of violet flame, supernatural in its vast luminosity, sprang 
from the earth, and, while we watched, speechless, unbe- 
lieving, mounted to the very zenith and spread half the 
immeasureable circle of the horizon. During the several 
seconds it lasted details of the landscape leered at us 
through a mauve daylight. 

The end of the world might come like that. You mocked 
your savage instinct to fall prostrate before a power greater 
than the power of man. 

"Some flares those Huns have! " you said to your neigh- 
bor, but you weren't quite sure it was an ordinary flare. 
Was it some new device? 

The violet sheet fell from the sky like a wind-swept cur- 
tain. The lesser fires resumed their flickering. Rockets 
and flares streaked always upwards, so that we lived in a 
chameleon twilight. It was as if a gigantic and undreamed 
of catastrophe had happened, could not be controlled, and 
threatened to sweep Europe. That men fought in its heart 
that we would fight there, too, was a fantastic imagining. 

"Organizations ready?" 

Everyone reported ready. So forward then into the 
midst of this mad disaster ! 

The moment had obliterating demands. Our carriages 
were overloaded. The fourgons were top heavy. Horse 
covers, packs, and various paraphernalia were lashed to 
the tops. Inside were our instruments of precision and 
communication. A picket line, perhaps, and heavy tools 
were slung from the axles in an attempt to lower the center 
of gravity. Sometimes a hand reel cart flopped drunkenly 
along behind. A sensitive child would have wept at sight 
of us. Of the attributes of vagabonds we lacked only 
one thing — a fortune teller. 

That long, rough road down the hill was damned as 
perfectly as once in our remote youth stumps had been. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 191 




Drawn by Private Enroth 
"The shelter of broken walls" 

Horses were damned by drivers. Drivers were damned by 
non-commissioned officers. Non-commissioned officers 
were damned by officers, officers were damned by other 
officers in order of rank from bottom to top. That is in a 
fashion of speaking. Probably the language was quite 
polite, and it was only the intention that swore. At any 
rate it got us on. We reached the foot of the hill at last 
and turned into the main road amidst the ruins of Cour- 
poil. 

We halted at once in the shelter of broken walls. There 
was a block ahead. Pretty soon motor lorries detached 
themselves from it and stormed petulantly past. Others 
wormed a way from the other direction. These were 
heavily loaded. They demanded the right of way. Some 
of the trucks, we saw, belonged to our division ammunition 
train. 

"What outfit. Buddy.?" a chauffeur yelled at us. 

"305th Field Artillery," a man answered thoughtlessly. 

Angry voices rebuked his indiscretion. It was a spirit 



192 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

that had grown on us steadily. At the front no one knows 
what ears are about. The chauffeurs, however, recogniz- 
ing us as of the same division, bandied words. 

"BeUeve me, you're going to some summer resort." 

"Where there's a will there's a way, but don't forget 
your will." 

"Hey ! you look as if you were moving from the Bronx to 
Brooklyn." 

We didn't have much repartee. We were too anxious 
for the obstructing lorries to get by. An hour must have 
slipped away before the jam was broken. As we lurched 
ahead a message came down the column, repeated from 
mouth to mouth. 

"Follow the carriage in front closely to avoid shell 
holes." 

That meant that the shells were falling on this road too 
fast for the pioneers. To dodge such holes, in spite of the 
advice, moreover, seemed an impossibility. We couldn't 
snake along from side to side in all that traffic. We 
couldn't stop until there was a chance to get past a hole. 
So we assigned dismounted men to walk ahead of the pre- 
cious fourgons. We threatened dire penalties if they 
didn't give plenty of warning. 

The forest of La Fere closed about us, shutting out the 
flames ahead and the wan light of the moon. We could 
see nothing. The man riding beside you was blurred by 
the heavy pall. You glanced to right and left, trying to 
imagine the form of the forest and the things it hid. Your 
only clear sensation was of the intolerable stench of death. 

We halted. Would we never go on again.? 

A double column of foot soldiers shuffled past. They, 
too, halted. We couldn't make out what service they 
belonged to, but it became clear something was wrong with 
them. They didn't seem to know where they were. They 
had an idea they had got on the wrong road, but they 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 193 

weren't sure. They stood there beside us for a long time, 
growing more and more impatient. 

So there we were hopelessly blocked, a rare target for 
a shell or an air bomb. 

One of the scarcely seen men lamented. 

"Ah'd rather take my chawnces in the line than be 
walked ta death." 

"Not me," another objected. "Ah can heah ol' Mistah 
shell a singin' now. He says : 'gonta getcha, gonta getcha, 
gonta getcha. Bam! Done gotcha.' " 

What appeared to be a huge light flashed out ahead, 
and was immediately extinguished. It showed us that 
the foot soldiers near us were from a southern engineer 
outfit. Their lungs were good. They burst into a hiige 
and angry chorus. 

"Put that blank, blank match out." 

Expressions of pity and disgust followed. 

"Say, Bo! Put yo'sel on a plate an' hand yo'sel with 
a knife and fo'k to Mistah Jerry. But don't use me f o' the 
gravy." 

"Hey, Captain, take me away from these city fellahs 
that strike matches in the dark." 

We all shared the shame of that one culprit. We tried 
to spot him to teach him a lesson. But the thing had been 
too quick, and the night was too friendly a protection. 
We were from the city. Perhaps the game of concealment 
came harder to us than to some others, but we thought 
we had learned it better. We had, as we found out later. 
That particular crime wasn't repeated. 

By this time the engineers had decided that they'd bet- 
ter try another road, so, without saying anything, they 
calmly countermarched, blocking the road more com- 
pletely than before, and holding us up for another half 
hour, dividing our column at the same time. 

We got out of the ruck at last, and upon a clear road. 



194 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

We made fast progress, urged by the necessity of reaching 
Nesles Woods before daylight. The dead towns echoed 
to our hurrying hoofs and wheels. And the walls shook 
to the reverberations of heavy guns just ahead. 

We entered the outskirts of Fere-en-Tardennois, still 
under shell fire. We slipped through unmolested. Scarcely 
anything remained of the town — the largest in the dis- 
trict. It was a heap of rubble with a few walls, like torn 
masks. It might have been the site of a prehistoric capital 
about which an archeologist has commenced to excavate. 

Near by batteries pounded away. Our horses, weary 
as they were, grew nervous. They moved restlessly about 
at halts. The men, on the other hand, forgetting their 
surroundings, the warnings against gas, everything except 
their great weariness, sank on the banks of ditches and 
slept fitfully. 

Daylight caught us again as we wound through the town 
of Nesles. It seemed impossible we should ever reach 
a bivouac at the time scheduled. Nesles was in ruins 
except for its storied mediaeval tower, which shells had 
only scarred. 

Beyond the town was a steep road, recently laid by the 
pioneers, which climbed to the forest. 

Even from there the forest was haggard and shell torn. 
The sloping fields between us and it were strewn with 
graves, dug where their occupants had fallen. Most of 
them had rough crosses, from which German helmets hung. 

The horses were unequal to the hill. We manned the 
wheels, and forced our way up. We entered between the 
broken trees. 

We felt we had arrived too late. There had been aero- 
planes in the distant sky. We had no doubt that the Hun 
knew there would be that night an artillery bivouac in 
Nesles Forest. 

The place had been policed after a fashion. The stench 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 195 

of death was less here than it had been at Courpoil. A 
regiment of pioneers was aheady in possession. They had 
removed such refuse of battle as they had been able to. 
Everywhere about the forest jQoor were coffin-shaped holes. 
We guessed they were individual shelters from shell and 
bomb fragments. We learned to call them "funk holes," 
a term we later applied to far more ambitious refuges. 
Anti-air guns opened all around us. 

Tsching! Tsching! 

Two shell cases whistled down in our woods. 

We put on our tin hats, but we knew they were no pro- 
tection against shell cases. 

We recalled all the aeroplanes that had bothered us at 
Done. We asked the pioneers with a perfect confidence 
if we didn't have the control of the air up here. We felt 
that if the American air service was concentrated any- 
wheres it would be on this front. 

The pioneers looked at us with pity. 

"The Huns," they answered, "own the air here and 
have a mortgage on the ether." 

Usually they followed with accounts of American bal- 
loons brought down by Hun planes, and unrestricted 
bombing attacks. Our hearts sank. We knew we had 
been seen coming in that morning. Yet we felt the pio- 
neers must be wrong. The money spent, the men enlisted 
in the air service, and all those fellows flying about Cou- 
lommiers ! 

Before many days we accused the pioneers of uttering 
conservative statements. 

A messenger found Captain Ravenel and took him to the 
Colonel. The Colonel introduced him to an officer who 
had just reported as assigned to the regiment. His name 
was Major George W. Easterday. He would take com- 
mand of the First Battalion. Captain Ravenel would re- 
turn to the command of his battery. 



196 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Major Easterday, we learned, had come originally from 
the regular army coast artillery. He had entered the 
service from civil life. He had been removed by a tele- 
gram from a few days' dalliance in Paris after a lively share 
in the advance north from Chateau Thierry, and shot 
back into the show as a member of the 305th. He was 
destined to remain with the regiment until it sailed from 
France. 

So the forced march ended, and we were in the woods 
which after disastrous experiments in other localities, was 
to become the regimental echelon. We breakfasted, un- 
strapped our packs, and stretched out to sleep. We were 
awakened almost immediately by the news that there 
would be a preliminary reconnaissance that afternoon. 
We studied our maps in preparation. The little party rode 
from the woods, and in an hour's time returned. There 
had been a blunder somewheres, for the rendezvous had 
not been made clear, and the various portions of the re- 
connaissance hadn't got together. So a real reconnaissance 
was set for early the next morning. 

We dined to the mounting accompaniment of gun fire, 
and crawled gratefully into our shelter tents, believing that 
no amount of noise could keep us awake. 

The old metaphor of the orchestra of the guns is 
justified. Batteries and individual guns seem to have 
their own tones. When a great many are firing perpet- 
ually, as on this front, the tones blend into crashing chords. 
We fell asleep to this gargantuan lullaby. 

After a few minutes the hideous screech of the gas alarm 
had us up and snapping our respirators on. The screech- 
ing died away. After a time the gas ofiicers went around 
singing out : 

"Masks may be removed." 

We went to sleep again. Again we were awakened by 
that unholy screeching. It happened three times. We 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 197 

told ourselves that the horns wouldn't awake us again, 
gas or no gas. 

On the heels of the last alarm something else aroused 
us. We heard the throbbing whir of Hun aeroplanes. 
There were plenty of targets on the Vesle, heaven knows, 
but we remembered our fear that we had been seen coming 
into the bivouac that morning. And the throbbing grew. 

Ba-room — ba-room — ba-room 

As if the engines missed fire rhythmically. 

Then above the artillery we got the crunching detona- 
tions of large air bombs. Those aeroplanes were coming 
nearer. There was a squadron out, and if it wasn't after 
us it would pass very close. 

Ba-room — ba-room — ba-room — Always nearer, and the 
detonations were louder now, and they came in salvos of 
four, each burst haK drowned by the next. 

Nearly overhead we heard the petulant rattle of a ma- 
chine gun. 

"That's the scout signalling to the bombers," someone 
said. 

"Why," we asked irritably, "are our aeroplanes back in 
cheerful places while these fellows give us their droppings 
undisturbed?" 

We thought of the other bivouacs, crowded with Amer- 
ican soldiers, with the Hun birds merrily hopping from one 
to another. 

The bombers responded to the scout, and their bombs 
fell on the edge of our woods with roars that made the artil- 
lery seem like childish fireworks. And you smiled grimly 
as you thought of those fellows making us blow our bugles 
all day long back near Coulommiers. 

The Huns dropped several salvos, and throbbed away 
to other pastures. 

Men were killed in Nesles Woods that night, but our 
check showed us that the 305th had escaped, and we 



198 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

crawled back to bed, and went to sleep, and didn't answer 
any more alarms until reveille dragged us out. 

That was the first of many experiences on the Vesle with 
Hun aeroplanes, working nearly undisturbed. Most men 
will agree there is no form of attack less pleasant. You 
approximate the sensations of an insect above which a 
giant foot wavers, waiting to descend obliteratingly. 



XVI 
RECONNOITERING IN FRONT OF FISMES 

The reconnaissance we made in the Fismes sector on 
August 14th was about as much hke our Lorraine ones 
as a pleasant day is hke a period of violent storm. Nor 
was it as agreeable as a reconnaissance made during an 
advance, for here we faced a semi-stabilized battle. The 
Huns could see our little party, and they had registered 
everything. Still all reconnaissances have one feature in 
common. They never work out exactly as one plans. 
They fail invariably to follow the pretty rules laid down 
by the books. At the front you mould technique to the 
demands of the moment, and to the necessity for quick 
results. 

It is a matter of interest to preserve the field order that 
sent us into this, our costliest battle. The reconnaissance 
was made in pursuance to its provisions. It follows : 

Headquarters 77th Division, 
American E. F. 

14 August, 1918. 
FIELD ORDER NO. 23. 
MAPS:FERE-en-TARDENOIS ) 

FISMES [l ^^^'0^0 

1. The 4tb Field Artillery Brigade will be relieved by the 152nd 
Field Artillery Brigade on the nights of August 15-16 and 16-17, 
1918, in compliance with G-3 order no. 31, 3rd Army Corps, 
14 August. 1918. 

2. The 305th Field Artillery will relieve the 16th Field Artillery, 
the 304th Field Artillery will relieve the 77th Field Artillery, 
the 306th Field Artillery will relieve the 13th Field Artillery, 

199 



200 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

assuming missions of organizations relieved. Necessary recon- 
naissances on 14th and 15th August as previously directed. 

3. Relief will be completed as follows: 

1st Night: (15-16) (a) | battery to be relieved in each posi- 
tion. ^ battery 152nd Brigade will be accom- 
panied by an officer who will remain at the 
position. One chief of section of each | battery 
will remain at the position, 
(b) Telephone operators, linemen, and observors 
of the 152nd Brigade will report to their posts 
and will remain in observation only. 

Snd Night: (16-17) (a) Remaining J of each battery relieved. 
One officer and 2 chiefs of section to remain at 
position until following noon. 

(b) All specialists relieved, excepting one tele- 
phone operator and one observer of 4th Field 
Artillery Brigade in each post, will remain in 
place until noon following. 

(c) Ammunition dumps will be turned over to 
152nd Brigade. 

(d) Battery combat train and other elements 
will stand relieved at 21 : 00 o'clock. 

(e) Ammimition train will stand relieved at 21 :00 
o'clock. 

4. Arrangements for exchange of wire, camouflage nets, etc. 
will be made between commanders concerned. 

5. Elements of 16th Field Artillery, as relieved, wiU proceed to 
position in FORET de FERE by roads tosouththroughNESLES. 
Other elements will use main road through FERE-en-TARDEN- 
NOIS. Elements of the 152nd Field Artillery Brigade will use 
the roads running north from the FORET de NESLES. 

6. The 302nd Trench Mortar Battery will remain for the pres- 
ent in the location where it is bivouaced. Reconnaissances will 
be made to select suitable positions for this battery so that it 
may be put in position in the near future. 

7. Command will pass to battery, battalion, and regimental 
Commanders of 152nd Brigade, as the relief of each unit is re- 
ported complete. 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 201 




Drawn by Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co. 
The Vesle and Aisne campaigns 

8. Command of the artillery of the sector will pass to Command- 
ing Officer 152nd Brigade at 8 A. M. August 17, 1918; P. C. 
152nd Field Artillery Brigade will open at FERE CHATEAU 
at the same time, same date. 

By command of Major General Duncan, 

J. R. R. Hannay 
Chief of Staff. 



So we set out to study the ground. The regimental, 
battalion, and battery parties left Nesles Woods together, 
and trotted down the hill to Mareuil where the 4th Field 
Artillery Brigade had its headquarters. It was a warm, 
brilliant day. Therefore, we knew we would see and be 



202 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

seen. We dashed past parties of pioneers repairing roads 
that had been damaged by shell fire the previous night. 
In the stricken village ambulances stood outside a dis- 
tributing station, and on the ground were many stretchers, 
bearing forms, some still, some restless, each covered with 
a secretive issue blanket on which the wounded man's tin 
hat and gas mask rested. Ether and iodine cut the per- 
vading chlorine odor. 

Brigade Headquarters was a one story building, origi- 
nally a cafe or a rural hostelry. It was dilapidated. The 
dusty square in front of it was white with chloride sprink- 
lings. Opposite, an arched gateway admitted to a large 
courtyard surrounded by stables and dwellings. Our 
party was herded in here and commanded to keep out of 
sight, because Hun planes were constantly passing over- 
head, expressing an impudent curiosity. So we got as 
many horses as we could in the sheds, and kept the rest 
close to the walls. Then officers and enlisted men made 
themselves inconspicuous and awaited the result of the 
conference of field officers which continued in the reformed 
cafe across the street. 

Every soldier, I think, has noticed that daylight ac- 
quires false qualities from one's own perceptions. To all 
of us there was an unnatural tone to that brilliant sun, 
streaked occasionally by enemy planes. Perhaps another 
planet might have light like that. You heard men com- 
menting about it with little laughs. 

Restlessness grew upon us. Would the conference 
never end.f^ A group of field officers came from head- 
quarters. Their faces were serious. They glanced about 
uneasily. Some of them appeared a trifle undecided. 
They paused, forming little groups, to which representa- 
tives from our party attached themselves. Gossip drifted 
into the hot, restless courtyard. One of the batteries which 
the 305th was going to relieve, we heard, had had forty 




K».-i 



U 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 203 

casualties during a burst of harrassing fire the afternoon 
before. There was always harrassing fire it seemed, where 
we were going. We would have to take up new positions, 
we said confidently. Back from the gossipping groups 
sHpped the depressing word that there were no positions 
much better than the ones aheady occupied. 

The Colonel came in. He said at first we would have to 
go forward from that point on foot. Those of us who had 
studied the maps groaned, for the road went diagonally 
toward the front line. By it our positions were many 
miles away. The Colonel reconsidered. He talked again 
to some of the ofiicers of the 4th. Doubtfully he decided 
we might ride as far as regimental headquarters with an 
interval of 200 meters between pairs. 

No officer or man that took that ride cared much for it. 
We curved up the hill past the half destroyed Romanesque 
church, and turned into a main road on the crest. There 
were, of course, no shell screens, and, to the left, we could 
look all the way to Jerry's temporary home. One of the 
men expressed the general emotion. 

"I feel all undressed up here," he grinned. 

Everywheres along that road were nice fresh signs left 
by the enemy, pointing the way to dressing stations, to 
ration and ammunition dumps, to short cuts for the vari- 
ous villages. And there were newer French signs, regula- 
ting traffic, repeatedly calling attention to the exposed 
nature of the highway. 

In the vicinity of a small group of buildings ahead large 
high explosive shells were vomiting blackly. We guessed 
that the group was Chartreuve Farm, the regimental head- 
quarters of the 16th Field Artillery. 

We waited in a lane, behind the shelter of a wall until 
the rest of the party had come up, then hurried across a 
courtyard into the farm. Two or three habitable rooms 
down stairs were packed. The colonel and the majors 



204 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

conferred behind a closed door with the field officers of 
the 16th. Less important but quite intelligent young 
men gave us the sector gossip while the Hun continually 
reminded us he knew where we were. 

The sector gossip was simple. It was a rotten place we 
were going to and there wasn't much we could do about 
it. Jerry had a big concentration of artillery opposite 
and he was using it with an admirable and murderous skill. 
We listened mutely to recitations of casualties. We 
sensed some joy on the part of these young men that they 
were going out; a brotherly sympathy that we were going 
in. 

This conference, too, ended at last, and the 16th gave 
us a bite from their field kitchen set beneath great trees 
in the pretty grounds of the place. 

The Colonel and his party went no farther just then. 
The two battalion parties continued on foot, out of the 
friendly trees, across stripped fields, and into the ravaged 
village of Chery Chartreuve. 

Even on that busy day the 305th rendered even more 
bibulous the name of this dissipated appearing town. It 
was known ever after among us as "Sherry Chartreuse." 

A military policeman stood between wrecked buildings 
at the first corner. He reminded the more careless of us 
to carry our gas masks in the alert position. Another, a 
hundred meters beyond, advised : 

"Walk farther apart, sirs. They're giving the road 
hally-lool-yah right now." 

They were. The louder whistling of shells preceded 
explosions close at hand. A bank on the side of the road 
towards the enemy was pitted with funk holes gouged out 
by infantrymen. Into these we ducked when the whist- 
ling warned us of a dangerously close explosion. We 
must have resembled animals of absurd habit that hopped 
aimlessly from place to place. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 305 

TMis erratic progress brought us to our first view of Les 
Pres Farm — place of unbeloved memories. 

A huge hangar rose where a country road crossed the 
main highway. The number of shell holes testified to the 
enemy's interest in that crossroads. The country road 
climbed a bare slope to a cluster of buildings, a third of a 
mile from the hangar. Your first impression was of a 
large and dignified stone dwelling house with half a dozen 
outpost trees, and wings of sheds and stables reaching be- 
hind it around a large courtyard. To the right were two 
small stone dwellings, with a horse shed and one or two 
outhouses just below them. The bare slope stretched 
upward for another half mile beyond the farm, blatantly 
broken by three battery positions, whose only protection 
was flat tops. Where ever you glanced you saw the mor- 
tal and redolent remains of horses in grotesque attitudes. 

Jerry saluted us. He commenced raking those exposed 
battery positions. From beneath the flat tops soldiers 
scurried like an indignant party of ants whose hill has been 
disturbed. As we climbed the slope we couldn't help ad- 
miring the nicety of the Hun fire. Their volleys walked 
through the positions then walked back again until there 
was so much jetty smoke you couldn't be quite sure where 
the shells were falling. 

"Hundred and fifties," we muttered. 

"Battery positions!" Someone sneered. "Targets! 
That's all!" 

The farm at first appeared deserted. Then we saw a red 
headed soldier peering at us curiously from a funk hole 
dug close to the wall of one of the smaller buildings. 

This one, nearest the enemy, we had been told would 
be the First Battalion command post. The other would 
be used for a similar purpose by the second battalion. The 
large farmhouse and the courtyard were occupied by the 
infantry for a dressing station and a reserve position; and 



206 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

the sooth, it was understood, would estabhsh a battaUon 
command post there. The farm, it was clear, was already 
crowded. From its exposed position it was obvious it 
would give Jerry plenty of practice. 

The two battalion parties went each into its little future 
home. 

Walls decorated with coarse cartoons by the Huns, very 
recently departed; logs piled in the rooms above the cellars 
in an insufficient effort to hurry the burst of a direct hit; 
bedding rolls tumbled about; a greasy deal table with, 
strewn across its top, the remains of a meal and a few gay 
copies of "La Vie Parisienne," incredibly out of place — 
these are the less animate things that greeted us. The 
others were some men with sleeves rolled up and a ten- 
dency to scratch, and flies innumerable — on the walls, on 
the men, obliterating the neglected food. 

The men welcomed us. When, they wanted to know, 
did they get out? 

We examined the cellars. There was one under each 
building — stuffy, fly-choked places with rough bunks im- 
provised, and, inevitably, the switch-boards in the places 
of honor. 

Gossip was unnecessary here. The place spoke for 
itself. Still they did tell us some things. 

This was the lOth's first trip to the front. They hadn't 
expected to stay here long. 

"We used," a major said, "the observatory for a bleach- 
ers. I'm not joking." 

Decidedly he wasn't. There were casualties in that ob- 
servatory. We had to move it. As long as we stayed 
there the ridge was raked periodically by high explosives, 
gas, and air bombs. 

We fought the flies away from a map and studied the 
dispositions. It was proposed to place batteries D, E, and 
F in the three positions the Huns were harassing on the 



HISTORY OF SOoth FIELD ARTILLERY 207 

hillside. From a rear window we could see a grove of 
trees just across the road, a few hundred meters from the 
farm. Battery C would go there — on a forward slope. 
We would have to walk some distance to inspect the pos- 
sibilities for the other two batteries. 

We set out after waiting for what we thought was a 
quiet moment. It might as well be said now that there 
were no quiet moments in or near Les Pres Farm until 
the Hun moved back to the Aisne early in September. 
There was never a time you could go about your work 
there with a feeling of comparative security. Always 
shells were bursting near you or whistling unpleasantly 
close. To give the devil his due, it was great artillery work, 
and it was devilishly uncomfortable. We learned after- 
wards that we had made Jerry dodge rather more than he 
had us. 

Now he opened up as we walked across the fields to the 
southeast, but we managed to reach the battery A and B 
positions and express a decided disapproval. We stood on 
the edge of a deep valley where B seemed fairly well off 
with a little natural foliage to break the angles of its cam- 
ouflage. A was a hundred meters forward in the open 
with only its flat tops to make a futile attempt to deceive 
the Hun airmen. 

The valley — the map called it the Fond de Mezieres; 
the soldiers a little later renamed it Death Valley — was 
full of artillerymen and infantry, bathing in a narrow 
stream, washing clothes, playing ball, or dreamily watching 
their horses as they grazed. 

"It's doomed," we said to each other. 

It was. A night or two later the Huns filled it with 
gas and high explosive, collecting a heavy toll. We de- 
cided at the first glance to have nothing to do with it even 
for our kitchens or first aid stations. 

We learned a lot that afternoon about the radius of Hun 



208 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD AETILLERY 

shell fragments. They seemed to follow us wherever we 
went. They disturbed our consultations, and they hur- 
ried our walks. Even so it was nearly six o'clock before 
we got through and took the road home, dodging along 
the line of funk holes to Chery Chartreuve. 

We noticed, as we walked, hot, dusty, and tired, through 
the town, a Y. M. C. A. canteen in a half ruined building. 
That place was to impress us less pleasantly later on, but 
now we greeted it with joy. Chalked across the door by 
some German was the legend: 

"Hier wasser" 

A big, cool looking pump stood inside, and the next room 
held a counter with chocolate, cakes, cigars, and cigarettes. 

We wandered on, refreshed, to Chartreuve Farm where 
our horses waited for us. 

Regimental headquarters, we learned, would not re- 
main there. There was a farm house a mile or so farther 
back — considerably safer to all appearances — named La 
Tuillerie. 

Nesles Woods impressed us as exceedingly peaceful and 
remote from danger when we trotted in just before dusk. 
We smiled. Clearly the lesson of the previous night had 
not been wasted on those who had stayed in the woods 
that day. Let the Hun airmen come! The floor of the 
forest was fairly honey-combed with elaborate funk holes. 
Some were even covered with sheets of elephant iron. 

The 305th learned early the wisdom of taking every pre- 
caution possible, and undoubtedly, it is due to that habit 
that our casualty list is no greater. 

We faced that night the Les Pres Farm facts. We had 
to go there, and it was clear that, because of the amount of 
artillery already in and the nature of the terrain, there 
were no really good positions to be had. Those, on the 
slope above the farm, however, probably could be im- 
proved on, and it was decided not to use more than two 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 209 

of them, and that only temporarily. A, B, and C, how- 
ever, would start, at least, in the 16th emplacements. The 
communication experts were as troubled as battery com- 
manders. It was going to be a job to keep those lines 
working, and lack of equipment would have to be com- 
batted as well as shell fire, 

"We've got to take our losses," everyone admitted, 
"but we can try to hold them down." 

Those who had made the reconnaissance had brought 
back to Nesles Woods some stirring descriptions. In our 
bivouac no illusions remained, and each man went about 
the work of preparation with an extreme care, with a 
thorough understanding. 

That day Major Miller replaced Captain Parramore, 
who had been invalided to a hospital, as regimental 
surgeon. 

At dusk of the 15th the two pieces prescribed from each 
battery were ready to start. We had hoped by leaving 
early to dodge some of the night congestion on the roads. 
For those roads would be shelled. 

"Keep your platoons moving," officers said with an ef- 
fect of prayer. 

Whips cracked, the horses strained forward. Our sec- 
tions jolted out of the friendly and haggard forest. 



XVII 
LES PRES FARM AND MUCH SHELL FIRE 

Early as we were, the roads were crowded from the 
first. The two other regiments of the brigade had had the 
same idea of an early start. Quads, bearing ammunition, 
and ration trucks, bumped along, their drivers sarcastic 
and anxious. There was a great deal of infantry out — 
some fantassins, and very many of our own doughboys. 
A lot of heavy firing made the dusk noisy. The darkness 
came down nearly impenetrable and ominous. Frequently 
now the column halted. 

There's plenty of chance in war. B's platoon had its 
captain. A's was in command of a lieutenant. During 
one of these halts B slipped past A, and a little later got 
what might have been A's share. 

But it was all rather confusing, and conditions got worse 
on the main road above Mareuil. Shells came perpet- 
ually like unseen fingers tearing the black pall of night. 
One knew that they wouldn't all fall over or short. The 
halts were continual, and, because of the congestion, you 
couldn't keep your carriages separated. 

E got it first. Shrapnel popped overhead, but nobody 
bothered much about that. Then a high explosive shell 
burst on the road in the midst of the platoon, and horses 
reared and tried to pull free, making queerly human 
sounds. It was impossible to tell at first how much dam- 
age had been done. Officers and non-commissioned offi- 
cers rode up and down the line, shouting and exhorting, but 
they might as well have saved their breath. There was 

210 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 211 

no panic among the men. Nor, miraculously, had a man 
been hit. Two horses had been killed, and their team 
mates were dangerously active. 

"Cut 'em out," came the quick command. "Haul 'em 
over to the ditch, if you can. But let's go on." 

The flashes from bursting shells helped the drivers. The 
de£,d animals were cut out and drawn to one side. The 
platoon moved ahead. 

It wasn't all shrapnel and high explosive. As the column 
approached Chartreuve Farm gas shells came over in a 
dangerous concentration. Reluctantly men put on their 
respirators, shutting out what little light there was. They 
struggled with frightened horses and got the awkward 
masks over their muzzles. They went on through a suf- 
focating blackness. The few commands were choked, 
and had to be mumbled from mouth to mouth. 

It was under these uncomfortable circumstances that B 
suffered. The column was blocked again near Chartreuve 
crossroads. B was just short of the junction, clearly a 
registered point, consequently a dangerous one. Yet there 
was nothing to do about it. Some outfit has to be caught 
at or near crossroads in these blocks. You can ride ahead 
if you like, and try your hand at straightening out the 
tangle, but in the majority of cases you come back with 
nothing accomplished, and you stand still, or sit your 
horse, and pray for the movement of the units ahead of you. 

The Hun came down on the crossroads, and some of the 
shells fell among the waiting cannoneers and drivers of B. 
Even in the blinding respirators it was easy to see that 
men and horses were down. The horses screamed, and 
there came a whimpering cry from some hurt fellow for 
his mother. 

Nor was there any panic here. An amateur of the 
National Army cried out cheerily : 



212 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

"It would be a hell of a war, boys, if nobody got killed." 

"Where's the Captain?" 

The Captain's horse stood riderless near the head of the 
platoon. Lieutenant Montgomery found his orderly, and 
that anxiety was removed. The Captain had gone ahead 
on foot to try to break the jam. Lieutenant Montgomery 
sent a messenger to report what had happened, and with 
his own hands attended as best he could to the wounded. 

There was nothing to be done for Private John W. 
Whetstone. He had been instantly killed. Private Harry 
E. Kronfield, it was clear, hadn't long to live. An am- 
bulance, by rare good luck, was struggling through the 
jam at this point. It picked Kronfield up and hurried 
him to a first aid station, but he died before morning. This 
ambulance also took Private Douglas Tredendall, so 
severely hurt that he was evacuated and never returned 
to the regiment, and Private Joseph Horowitz. His injury 
was particularly unfortunate as he was the medical orderly 
with the platoon. His task of mercy was very brief. With 
one arm blown away he was evacuated and we didn't see 
him again. First Class Private George A. Thomas was 
wounded less seriously. 

By the time these men had been cared for and the horses 
cut out the jam broke, and the column pounded on to- 
wards Les Pres Farm. 

D battery had no casualties on the way up. Its first 
platoon went, as did E's temporarily on to the hill above the 
farm. There was a lot of gas there and several bursts of 
heavy shelling. By choosing quieter moments, however. 
Captain Starbuck got his guns in and his limbers and 
caissons started for home. 

Corporal Connie F. Geer was in charge of the second 
piece caisson. Going back the traffic had thinned out a 
good deal so that the column moved rapidly. Corporal 
Geer had been particularly cheery and helpful durimg the 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 213 

trying moments when the caissons had dumped their am- 
munition at the position. On the return journey he was 
at the rear of the column. He went back often to make 
sure there was no straggUng. The train must have been 
half way home when one of his men reported Geer missing. 
A search of the road was unsuccessful. The shelling was 
still heavy, and it was necessary to get men, horses, and 
carriages back to the echelon. There a report was made, 
and Lieutenant Hoadley set out with a party. They 
found Corporal Geer's body at the lip of a fresh crater close 
to the side of the road. His death had probably been in- 
stantaneous. He was buried that day in a quiet corner 
of Nesles Woods. 

Even at the echelon the night didn't wear itself away 
very comfortably. Regimental Headquarters had moved 
to La Tuillerie Farm that afternoon. At midnight a 
messenger arrived with a note from Colonel Doyle for the 
battalion commanders, explaining the arrangements for go- 
ing in. This impressed some as altering a few of the dis- 
positions. There were excited conferences. One, some 
of us will recall was held in a fourgon, heavily blanketed 
with horse covers. Even so, the light of the single candle 
within escaped wanly here and there. Outraged cries 
roared through the forest. 

"Put out that hght, you fool!" 

" If you want to croak go and do it by yourself." 
It was impossible to heed these compliments. If im- 
portant dispatches arrive they must be read. What to do 
about the present one was a problem. The solution gave 
Captain Henry Reed a pleasant automobile ride through 
quarrelsome firing to headquarters. He found out there 
that the document hadn't been intended to change any- 
thing, so we went ahead on the basis we had agreed upon 
the day before. 



214 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The details went up on the morning of the 16th. 

The movement of a detail" was never a very dignified 
proceeding. Details went in for efficiency rather than ap- 
pearance. The surrey was always an absurdity on a shell- 
torn road. There was never anything less military. But 
it carried a lot of stuff. 

Doughboys used to grin at the group of very military 
appearing horsemen followed by a couple rambling cobs 
which drew this vehicle with its fringes flapping from 
a bent top. Underneath were piled switchboards, tele- 
phones, instruments of precision, and spare wire. 

Everybody"^ got to the farm, and pitched in. Officers 
and men of the battalion details, in spite of the fire, got 
an idea of where the lines ran, and how they were laid. 
They also appraised the task that lay ahead. These lines 
were continually shelled out. Some improvement could 
be made by relaying here and there, but at best it was go- 
ing to be nasty work. For the Huns had so much artillery 
and ammunition that they didn't hesitate to snipe with 77s 
or Austrian 88s at a single man at work in the barren fields. 

The detail men in such warfare have rather the worst 
of it. They work, as a rule, in pairs on the lines, or in an 
exposed observatory, or on the edge of woods, doing the 
careful work of a surveyor under the most distracting con- 
ditions. And it is always simpler to be brave in a crowd. 

The yellow intelligence sheet for that day, too, informed 
us that the enemy was taking an increasing interest in Les 
Pres and its neighboring positions. Things were noisy 
while we settled ourselves. The B position, which we had 
thought the best of the lot, got a pounding during the 
morning. The B men escaped, but the 16th had a number 
of casualties. Captain Ravenel reconnoitered a fresh posi- 
tion, and Major Easterday decided that he should move 
his first platoon there that night, and bring his second into 
action alongside of it. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 215 



Major Wanvig had put F directly into a new position 
near the Les Pres crossroads, and he settled on positions 
for D and E on the slope of the valley beyond Chery Chart- 
reuve, so that none of the sections took many chances with 
the emplacements on the hill. 

The observatories looked nastier than their reputa- 
tion, but we had to use the ridge above the farm. The 
regimental and the two battalion observatories were 
there, so close together that they were really one. Be- 
sides, the ridge was sprinkled with the observatories of 
other organizations, with division and corps stations; and 
the infantry had a reserve line near. All this activity 
added to the discomforts of that exposed place. Lieu- 
tenant Thornton Thayer had spent the previous night 
there and had got the lay of the land. We sent our ob- 
servors and operators up, and, although an officer of the 
16th remained for several hours afterwards, practically 
took over at noon. 

Lieutenants MacNair and Graham were already down 
with the infantry, and we sent eight enlisted men to them 
to act as runners. It was found advisable at the start 
to alternate this work between the two battalions, so that 
after the first day only one officer and one group of men 
were with the infantry at one time. Such liaison was 
particularly dangerous in this sector. The infantry re- 
ceived a lot of high explosive, and, because of the low 
ground near the Vesle, suffered from gas more than the 
artillery. Yet it was 
really the only liaison 
we had, beyond rocket 
signals. It had been 
found difficult to 
maintain a telephone 
line between infantry 

and artillery battalion • J Dratcn by Private Everts, Battery E 




216 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

headquarters in spite of the division Haison order which 
gave to the infantry the task of laying and maintaining 
such a hne. We put a wire through to a forward observa- 
tory at Mount St. Martin, very close to the front line, 
but because of the constant movement of battalion head- 
quarters and the shortage of men, the infantry never 
hooked up with it. We connected with the infantry net 
through one of their switchboards, and when they had 
wire communication with their front line troops we did 
too. But in such a type of warfare runners furnish the 
only dependable communication, and our men were on the 
road day and night. 

The sun set hot and red that first night in, and with 
his going Jerry awakened to a new interest in us. There 
were no dugouts. Men not on duty crawled into such 
funk holes as existed or into the stifling cellars at battalion 
headquarters. 

Privates Shackman and Silber had already been sent to 
the observatory to act as operators. Lieutenant Thayer left 
the shelter of the cellar and with Corporal Tucker dodged 
up the hill to relieve the officer and the men of the 16th. 

At Boston, as the observatory was called, there was, at 
that time, for protection only two narrow trenches, five 
or six yards apart, one for the operators, the other for the 
observers. They were less than six feet deep. They had 
no overhead cover. 

A few minutes after the arrival of our party a thick cur- 
tain of high explosives descended on the ridge. The ugly 
little volcanoes bracketed Boston while our men crouched 
in the trenches. The curtain lifted. Perhaps it was just 
an evening hymn of hate, and the rest of the night would 
pass without music. 

In five minutes the curtain was down again. The 
bracket narrowed. Fragments of shell shrieked over the 
trenches. Sand stung the faces of the little party. 




"O.K.— O.K." 



Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D 



HISTORY OF 305 til FIELD ARTILLERY 217 

Lieutenant Thayer and the 16th officer decided to take 
their men to a flank until the show should end. 

"Jump out and run for it after the next shell," they 
directed. 

One burst closer than before. The little party clam- 
bered from the trenches. Some were quicker than others. 
A following shell hit directly on the lip of the smaller 
trench. The 16th officer fell back, his rain coat drilled full 
of jagged holes. Private Martin W. Silber slipped in on 
top of him, and the rest turned back without hesitation 
to see what could be done. They lifted Silber out. He 
was dead. The 16th officer had not been injured. 

So those that remained dashed to the left and fell in 
shell holes where they waited for the curtain to lift again. 
But gas came in for a time with the high explosive, and 
they put on their respirators and worked from shell hole to 
shell hole until they were out of range. 

In the command posts at the farm everyone knew the 
ridge and the crossroads were getting it. Our men were 
in the observatory and our platoons before long would 
have to pass the crossroads. 

A drop on the switchboard fell. 

"Silber's dead," the operator commented. 

He commenced to test. 

"O. K.— O. K." 

He paused. He whirred the magneto of his home tele- 
phone. 

"Red line out, sir." 

A moment later he reported two other lines out. That's 
the way they went at Les Pres. 

Linesmen left through the noisy darkness with coils of 
wire and testing telephones over their shoulders. 

In the First Battalion cellar the operator called to Major 
Easterday. 

" Second Battalion wants you, sir." 



218 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The major lifted the hand set. 

"Tucker. Which one is he?" he asked. 

You see he had only been with the regiment a few days 
then. 

"What's the matter with Tucker?" Reed asked. 

"First battalion says they've just heard he's been 
killed." 

There were close personal friends of Tucker's among the 
detail in that cellar. They swore softly as they went 
about their jobs. 

As the major replaced the telephone hand set on the 
table the blanket which hung as a curtain at the cellar 
entrance waved. A hand drew it aside and in stepped 
Corporal Tucker. 

Our men didn't believe in ghosts. They grasped his 
hand and a laugh burst out. 

Tucker denied the Second Battalion's story, and made 
his report. Thayer had sent word by him that he was 
going to establish a new observatory. We had gone over 
the ground with a fine tooth comb. The change in the 
location of the observatory would only be a matter of a 
few yards. A digging detail was ordered up to him with a 
guide. Lieutenant Klots, with a number of bandsmen, 
bearing picks and shovels, arrived about the same time, 
and started to dig in a regimental observatory. Cor- 
poral Caen ran up to stand by the telephone in the old ob- 
servatory until the change could be made to the new ones. 
And all night the Hun remembered the ridge with high 
explosive and gas, while stray aeroplanes swooped low 
there, to let fall a bomb or two. 

The curtain in the cellar swung in again. 

"For the Lord's sake keep that curtain down," some- 
body grumbled. "If an aeroplane sees this candle we'll 
be bombed out in a jiffy." 

But it was a battery commander who had halted his 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 219 

platoon at the crossroads. He took off his helmet. The 
perspiration poured from his hair. What, he asked the 
major, should he do about his platoon? He didn't want 
to lose his men or his pieces if he could help it, and the 
shelling down there was particularly vicious. Nor was 
there any way around. 

"Watch your chance and take them through one at a 
time," the major said shortly. 

The battery commander nodded, replaced his helmet, 
and backed cautiously out. 

"Somebody on the line for the major of the 16th," the 
switchboard man called. 

The 16th officers had sat there for some time, waiting 
only to hear that the relief was complete before striking 
out for quieter parts. The 16th major answered the call 
and looked annoyed. We gathered that an ammunition 
dump at the C position had been hit and was burning. 
His officer in command there evidently wanted to know 
what he should do. 

"Go in and put it out," the 16th major said, and lowered 
the hand set. 

Almost at once, it seemed to those in the cellar, the same 
drop rattled again, and the operator asked for the same 
officer. The 16th major picked up the hand set with a 
frown. Then his expresson altered, and when he spoke 
his voice had changed, too. 

"Wolff is dead," he said to Major Easterday, and every- 
one knew he spoke of the officer in command of the C 
position whom he had just ordered into the burning dump. 

"Wolff is dead," he repeated, "and Dean, the only other 
officer I have there, is wounded. You don't take over until 
the relief is complete. I'll have to get one of the 16th's 
officers. Who is Robinson?" 

"One of our battery C officers," Major Easterday 
answered. 



220 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

No one asked for a moment, because it seemed certain 
that Robinson had been struck, also. The 16th major 
shook his head when at last the question had been asked. 

"No, he's taken command. He seems to know what he 
is about." 

Robinson did. It was for that affair that he and Cor- 
poral Johnson were awarded the Distinguished Service 
Cross. Wolff and he had been sitting together in a funk 
hole, and Wolff had just said to him, expecting to leave 
with the last of his battery in a few moments : 

"You know, Robinson, I'm not so sure I'm going to get 
out of this place alive after all." 

He had laughed a little, and just then the shell had tum- 
bled into the dump, and he had telephoned battalion head- 
quarters and had asked what he should do about it. He, 
and his assistant Dean, and Robinson had all gone in, 
carrying dirt which they had thrown on the popping shells. 

Robinson had just gone out for more dirt, and Deane 
was starting when the explosion occurred. There had 
been shrapnel there. While it was still bursting Robinson 
had dashed in. Corporal Johnson, without any command, 
without any request, had followed him, and they had 
dragged out Wolff's body, and the wounded lieutenant. 
It was then that Robinson had reported. 

The major of the 16th looked very tired. At last he 
shrugged his shoulders, and called up his colonel. 

"Wolff's dead. Dean's hurt. Burning dump. What.? 
One officer of the 305th, but I'm getting an officer over to 
stay until the relief's complete." 

It seemed at times as if that formality would never be 
accomplished. We got reports from A, and, at last from 
C. But B hadn't reported its second platoon in yet, or 
its command post moved to the new position. So we sat 
and waited. 

We had had a number of gas alarms during the evening. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 221 

Time after time our gas guard had wound his klaxon, and 
time after time we had struggled into respirators, and the 
switchboard operators had learned how difficult it was to 
talk intelligibly through a mask. But we had suspected 
nothing worse than mustard gas. While we sat impa- 
tiently there an officer of the 16th stumbled down the 
cellar steps and through the curtain. He seemed to be in 
a hurry, and his face was white. From a corner a quiet 
voice spoke: 

"There's phosgine in this cellar." 

The penetrating, sickly odor, was apparent to everyone. 
Masks went on with a rush. The newcomer, however, 
didn't disturb his. He waved his hand deprecatingly. It 
trembled a trifle. 

"Don't bother. I think I've brought it in on my clothes. 
Those shells are all over the hillside. Good Lord! I tell 
you one of them fell at my feet. Don't know why the 
rotten thing didn't hit me. When are we getting out. 
Major?" 

The major shook his head. Nobody knew. It was B 
that held us up, and we tried them again. This time there 
was no answer to our call. We tried them through A and 
C. They were out of touch with the world. 

Over there on the edge of Death Valley the B signal 
men worked frantically with a coil of twisted pair that had 
been snarled half a mile from the new battery position. 
We established runners from that point to the battery so 
that the relief could be reported and communication of a 
sort maintained until daylight when the battalion detail 
ran a new line in. 

At midnight, then, the 16th was through, and it went 
out of Les Pres Farm, leaving us our own masters. 

We gazed upon our new kingdom. In the stifling cel- 
lars such men as were not on duty tried to sleep. They 
lay sprawled on the dirt floor, endeavoring in their rest- 



222 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

lessness to keep out of each other's way. Their respirators 
were conveniently at hand. 

At the positions men crouched in funk holes, sleeping 
by turn. There lay one moaning softly with a bad touch 
of shell shock. Now and then a soldier paused and spoke 
to him sympathetically; for the hardiest realized that this 
was illness, not cowardice. You had only to feel his weak 
and rapid pulse. The surgeon was on his way. 

Details struggled with the flat tops, softening angles 
against the daylight. Nearly motionless the rocket guards 
gazed in the direction of Boston. Nestling against the 
lip of the hill was a wan patch, like a dying bit of fox fire. 
It was a shelter tent, blanketed, and with flaps down 
where two officers worked over the intricate figures of new 
barrages. 

Even in that unrevealing starlight each man you saw 
projected an expression of extreme weariness. And al- 
ready many were ill with the dysentery that got us all 
sooner or later. And there was no prospect ahead of real 
sleep as long as we should stay in that place. 

There seemed no diminution in the fire even when the 
stars paled. The details took advantage of the first light 
and went over the lines while Hun aeroplanes loafed about 
the ridge and the positions. 

Instead of the brisk freshness of early morning we 
breathed the warning odor of animal decay. 

The last officer of the 16th walked through Les Pres 
Farm, asking about his horse, reminiscing disjointedly 
about his escapes. We watched him go without saying 
anything, wondering when we would follow him and how. 




Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D 
A Kitchen near a Battery Position 



XVIII 
THE COST OF BATTLE 

Somebody said they called our observatory at the Mont 
Saint Martin crossroads, Pittsburg, because it was so 
smoky. We inherited the name from the 16th, but there's 
probably something in it. Yet it is extremely doubtful 
if the Huns ever knew we had an observatory there. The 
instruments were behind a ruined garden wall, with a little 
foliage to protect them from airmen. The personnel was 
always limited and was taught to keep itself out of sight 
when aeroplanes appeared overhead. Against the heavier 
firing they sought refuge in an old wine cellar. 

It was that crossroads that gave Pittsburg so much 
shelling. Our ambulances used the main road through 
Mont Saint Martin, tearing past Pittsburg and through 
the dismantled village. Always the Huns let them have it 
at the crossroads and through the town. That's really 
the reason the town was destroyed, for one fails to recall a 
definite bombardment of any of the buildings. After a 
time they tried carrying the wounded through on stretch- 
ers, but these seemed to draw as much fire as the ambu- 
lances. 

The first aid station at the farm was a busy place. The 
ambulances would scurry up the road into the courtyard, 
unload, and hurry back again. Others would arrive empty 
and load up with men for the evacuation hospitals. Then 
we had a good many cases on the spot. For, as has been 
said, the shelling didn't let up until the enemy had re- 
treated to the Aisne. The courtyard, perhaps because it 

223 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

was the center of the farm and the Hun, consequently, 
tried to put his center of impact there, received a large 
proportion of the hits. Certainly an average of five or six 
men a day must have been killed at the farm itself while 
our division was in on the Vesle. 

The Second Battalion had established its first aid sta- 
tion under Dr. Moore in its command post. The First 
had located Dr. Cronin in a draw between A and B bat- 
teries, planning to use Dr. Moore for its command post and 
C Battery casualties. 

The Second Battalion, however, decided on the second 
day to leave Les Pres Farm and move back to Chery Char- 
treuve which seemed less exposed, and less attractive to 
the Hun gunners, so the First arranged with the infantry 
to use its first aid station for local casualties. 

Gas cases came in large numbers. The infantry sent 
out hundreds of men daily from the Vesle bottom. When 
Lieutenant Graham was relieved on the 17th his eyes were 










•V. 










Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth, Batter]/ D 
A Battery D piece at Chery 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 225 

seriously inflamed from mustard gas, and he was sent back 
to the echelon for two days. If he had asked he might 
have been evacuated and so have escaped his fate of a few 
days later. But Graham knew how short of officers the 
regiment was, and he insisted on carrying on with his duty 
in spite of his painful condition. 

Consolidation here differed radically from similar tasks 
in Lorraine. We were so busy that we straightened things 
out as we went along, and we were often surprised to learn 
how efficient our makeshifts were. For it must be re- 
membered we were fighting under new conditions. There 
had, until this time, been very little of this semi-stabilized 
warfare. The 305th faced new problems, solved them, 
and gave instructors and secret pamphlet writers some- 
thing to pass back to newer outfits. 

Always the digging on the ridge went on until Lieuten- 
ant Thayer was comparatively comfortable. 

The firing, meantime, increased. On August 18th, the 
day selected by Major Wavig for the removal of his com- 
mand post from the farm, Jerry commenced to take the 
most flattering care with us. 

A number of the Second Battalion telephone men, under 
Sergeant Point, were salvaging wire, preparatory to the 
move. Point, I recall, was spinning a reel, calling out 
good-natured encouragement to his workers. A group 
of the First Battalion men stood behind the farm wall, com- 
menting on what appeared to be a relief from the heavy fire. 

The rising shriek of a shell made itself heard. For a 
moment we gauged the sound. That shell was going to 
fall mighty close. The shriek was right on us. Then it 
ceased. No explosion followed. 

"Guess I'm getting jumpy," a man said. "Heaven 
knows where that bird burst." 

"A dud," another warned. "Watch out for the next 
one." 



£26 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Still one doesn't worry enough about the shell that 
doesn't burst. We went about our business. Within two 
minutes a shell exploded outside the window of the First 
Battalion command post, filling the room with smoke and 
knocking the adjutant, the telephone officer, and the ser- 
geant-major across the room. Outside Point and his men 
had dropped. A fragment flew across to a shed against 
the farm wall, killing one of our horses. 

Everyone picked himself up, grinning, and sought 
shelter. The prospect was uncomfortably clear. That 
was the commencement of precision fire on the farm. It 
was no time to salvage wire. 

Point, with Lieutenant Fenn and Sergeant-Major Apple- 
gate, stood close to the wall of the Second Battalion com- 
mand post, apparently safe from the burst of any pro- 
jectile coming over the building. We hadn't learned to 
appreciate then the sharp angle of fall of some of the Ger- 
man howitzers. That cost Point his life. A shell whistled 
over the building and burst in the garden a few feet in front 
of the wall. The three fell to the ground, but a fragment, 
flying towards the house, caught Point in the back. He 
got first aid and was hurried away, optimistic as ever, and 
talking of a quick return to the detail. But Dr. Moore 
was doubtful, because a lung had been torn. In a few 
days word came back that the sergeant was dead, and the 
Second Battalion had had a loss difficult to repair. 

The Second Battalion left Les Pres Farm that afternoon 
just as an order came down that each battalion should put 
forward four pirate pieces. Major Wanvig decided his Bat- 
tery F, near the crossroads, accounted for his four. A and 
B were designated each to send out two pieces, and Cap- 
tains Dana and Ravenel made their reconnaissances and 
chose the best positions available at some distance from 
each other in a draw to the west of Saint Gilles. They 
were on a forward slope. It was necessary to lay lines to 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 227 




Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private 
Enroth, Battery D 

Carrying in ammu- 
jnition 



them approximately 
three kilometers long. 
There was always difficulty 
getting ammunition up, and 
it is^probable that the pieces 
would have been more valuable in 
their battery emplacements. 
But, as has been suggested, the 
higher command as well as the 
lower was often experimenting, 
and the move at the time seemed 
useful. It proved a decidedly uncomfortable one. 

That night the limbers were brought from Nesles Woods. 
Details were already at work on the emplacements and the 
lines when Lieutenant Brassell started up with the A guns, 
and Lieutenant Montgomery with the B. One of the 
telephone men met the party with the cheerful news that 



228 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

the Huns had been strafing the positions all evening. With 
the usual optimism of the American soldier, the cannoneers 
grunted and said that in that case things would probably 
be quiet for awhile. So they sent the limbers away and 
manhandled the pieces into their emplacements. Shell 
by shell they carried the ammunition in and piled it in the 
least exposed spots. Then they started funk holes, for 
they saw they would need good ones. By midnight the 
Hun shells were dropping again, and the men drew off to a 
flank until the show seemed over. As soon as they had 
returned to their digging Jerry popped at them again, ap- 
pearing to follow them with an uncanny malice as they 
scurried for safety. 

It was always more or less like that in those pirate posi- 
tions. There were two regular programs that the men 
could foresee and guard against — one at 12:30 p.m., the 
other at 6 p.m. But in between came impromptu con- 
certs that couldn't always be avoided. 

A and B both got plenty of attention. Both had the 
same difficulty bringing up ammunition, and both suffered 
from a similar lack of officers and men. Sergeant Buch- 
binder was put in charge of the A pieces, and Sergeant 
Martin got B's. There were no extra cannoneers. That 
meant that from ten soldiers at each position men had to 
be found to serve the guns, to post guard, to dig shelters, 
to carry cooked rations from the kitchens three kilometers 
away, to lug in ammunition, scrape, and polish it, and to 
attend to odd jobs of sanitation and getting back the 
wounded. It must be remembered, too, that at this time 
nearly everybody was suffering from the weakening dysen- 
tery. 

No one knows how he gets through such labor without 
sufficient sleep and with unsatisfactory food. Still, after 
a heavy shelling, even the digging went with a strong 
rapidity. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 229 

The second night in the Bosche took a particular dishke 
to the B positions. Sergeant Martin ordered his men to 
the flank, but one of the early shells killed Private George 
J. Lucking, and wounded Private Fred Scheuner. 

Two men volunteered to carry the wounded man three 
miles to the First Aid Station. He was heavy. They had 
to rest. They paused in a dug out. While one of them re- 
mained with Scheuner the other hurried to the battery 
position and got a detail with a stretcher. Corporal 
Kelsey and Privates Terry and Elliot went back. The 
little party put Scheuner on the stretcher and started in. 
The Hun seemed to have a special sense for such missions. 
He opened up with gas. While the shells fell around them 
the stretcher bearers put on their respirators remarking: 

"At that, gas is a darned sight better than H. E." 

On the 20th Sergeant Bernhardt's section relieved Ser- 
geant Martin's. 

That same night a sergeant, who was an extremely good 
churchman, went up with two G. S. carts and an escort, 
bearing ammunition. The uncomfortable main road was 
his only practical route, and Jerry showed him that he had 
a better trick than high explosive for ammunition escorts. 
An aeroplane swooped low against the moonlight and be- 
gan pumping machine gun bullets at the sergeant and his 
horses. There seemed a necessity both for divine inter- 
vention and more speed. A combination of the two might 
avail. So the sergeant, thorough in all things, prayed 
devoutly. 

"Lord God, help us now!" 

And to the horses with a different sort of fervor. 

"Get up, you s." 

The entire party lived to tell the story. 

The difficult and disturbed routine of the pirate posi- 



230 HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 

tions continued. Sergeant Buchbinder was carried out, 
wounded, on the 24tli, and the affair ended when, the next 
day, the Bosche informed B that it had the pieces brack- 
eted to a meter. 

The early morning had been particularly quiet. The 
crews sat comfortably about one of the pieces, smoking 
after an early luncheon of cold chow and coffee. 

Not a bad looking place, they agreed, when Jerry let 
it alone. Evidently Jerry had had enough of them, and 
what an afternoon it would be to make up sleep ! 

Whiz! 

The racket started with no more warning than that. 
An avalanche of metal descended. At the first whistle 
each man scurried for his funk hole. 

These little shelters had grown during the week. They 
looked like deep graves. Each cannoneer crouched in 
his, listening to the angry shrieks of the fragments, to the 
splintering of trees, fancying always that he was the sole 
survivor of the party. It was fire for destruction of the 
most intense sort. 

At the end each crawled out and looked for the mangled 
bodies of his comrades. All that digging hadn't been 
wasted. The entire group stood there, half-dazed, but 
unhurt. 

The position, however, was in ruins. The trees lay in 
a twisted mass. Sergeant Bernhardt's gun was out of 
action. A huge fragment had passed through the recoil 
mechanism. The telephone lines had been torn to pieces. 

That was the end of those pirate positions. Orders 
came to salvage what was left. The limbers appeared 
that night and drew the guns out. Two G. S. carts ar- 
rived and loaded the ammunition. 

Out on the open road one of the carts broke down. There 
was a good deal of shelling, and another aeroplane took a 
hand, dropping a bomb very close to the party. The 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 231 

limbers had gone on. The guide was evidently with them. 
The drivers of the carts had never been on the road before. 
They were at a loss. Private Margid, who had been at the 
position from the first day, volunteered to stay behind 
until the cart was fixed when he would guide both in. 
After another breakdown he got them to the position, 
and once more the firing batteries of A and B were united. 

During these days the men at the regular positions 
hadn't had any too pleasant a time. 

Private George L. Forman was killed on August 16th 
while walking from the Battery A position to the edge of 
Death Valley. 

On the 18th Captain Douglas Delanoy was wounded 
at an improvised observatory near Boston. He had an 
old German dugout for protection, and at the first shell 
started to slide into this. A small fragment caught him 
on the knee, making apparently a trivial wound. His 
leg stiffened, however, and he was evacuated and did not 
return to the regiment until the last of October. This 
left Lieutenant Derby in command of Battery F. 

On August 21st, while firing a normal barrage, Battery 
D's number 2 piece was destroyed by a premature burst, 
as B's had been on the range at Souge. Fortunately the 
full gun crew was not in the pit. Private Walter Rubino 
was killed. Gunner Corporal Arthur Roos — probably be- 
cause he was for the moment adding the duties of number 
2 to his own, and was not on his seat when the lanyard was 
pulled — escaped with a bad fracture of the skull. He 
was in hospital for more than two months, but was even- 
tually returned to his battery. Sergeant Jacob Metzger 
and Private Joseph Cohen were seriously wounded and 
evacuated to America. 

On the next day, the 22nd, the regiment lost its first 
officer at the front. 



232 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Lieutenant Graham had returned to duty, although 
still suffering from his gassing of a few days before, and had 
relieved Lieutenant MacNair at the infantry battalion 
command post. 

On this evening he walked with Captain Belvedere 
Brooks of the 308th Infantry to a shelter near Ville Savoie, 
known as Cemenocal Cave. The Huns had not, appar- 
ently, fired on this point before. A number of other in- 
fantry officers stood near, and a large group of enlisted 
men. This congregation seemed unsafe, and Lieutenant 
Graham spoke of it. 

A shell came over and fell near the party, a dud. 

Captain, afterwards Major, Breckenridge, cried: 

"Lookout!" 

There was a rush for the entrance of the cave. Gra- 
ham and Brooks with the other infantry officers stood 
back to let the men in first. A second shell burst in the 
midst of the little group. Graham, Brooks, and a second 
infantry officer were killed. Lieutenant Bruce Brooks, 
Captain Brooks' brother, was at that time assigned to our 
regiment. Captain Breckenridge got word to him, and tele- 
phoned Major Easterday of Lieutenant Graham's death. 

Lieutenant MacNair happened to be in the Second 
Battalion's command post. He was hurried down to the 
infantry, while Lieutenant Ellsworth O. Strong was sum- 
moned from the echelon to replace Lieutenant Graham. 

Corporals Hickey and Rice and Privates Golden and 
Aasgard, who were on duty with the infantry, carried 
Lieutenant Graham's body to Les Pres Farm over heavily 
shelled roads. Chaplain Sheridan was summoned and the 
lieutenant was buried in the little cemetery on the Chart- 
reuve Road where so many of our men lie. 

Three days later Lieutenant Strong, who had relieved 
Lieutenant MacNair, was killed with a number of in- 
fantrymen near the same spot while going about his work 




Barbed Wire 




A Tank 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 233 

with that quiet and confident abihty that characterized 
everything he did. 

After that Lieutenants Klots and Brassel alternated on 
haison. Lieutenant Klots was touched by a machine gun 
bullet in the arm, but fortunately the wound was not se- 
rious, and he was back at work within a few days. For 
the question of officers was growing daily more serious. 
An order came through requiring the regiment to send one 
captain, three first lieutenants, and five second lieutenants 
to America to serve with new organizations. The Colonel 
chose the following: Captain Fox; First Lieutenants 
Brooks, Dodworth, and Stryker; and Second Lieutenants 
Beck, Sawin, Schutt, Walsh, and Wemken. These officers 
left Nesles Woods on August 26th. 

It was about this time, too, that the Chief of Artillery 
reminded Lieutenants Camp, Church, and Fenn of their 
recommendations at Souge. The first was sent as in- 
structor to the Field Artillery School at Meucon, the 
second to Valdahon, and the third to La Corneau. 

The officers that remained, one can understand, didn't 
get much rest. An organization with two officers for 
duty was lucky. 

One is reminded of the Battery Commander who was 
summoned to Division Headquarters to testify about 
some alleged short firing. 

"On the day in question," he was asked, "did you have 
an officer with all your guns?" 

He answered promptly: 

"I did not, sir." 

Oh the disapproval of those Olympians whose lot in 
war lets them ask such questions! 

"And why not.'*" this Olympian demanded with an air 
of, "Young man you shall be tried." 

There was a map. The Battery Commander put his 
finger on it. 



234 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 







Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth, Battery D 
"The telephone details were at it day and night" 

"Because," he answered, "One of my guns is here, an- 
other is here, a kilometer from the first, and the other 
two are here, three kilometers away. I am the only 
officer on duty with my battery." 



The telephone details were at it day and night, but 
communication on the Vesle was kept open. Working 
on the lines, as they did, the telephone men became 
experts in judging the probable point of impact of a shell. 
They knew when to duck, and they did it — under orders, 
some of them, at first. Without this ability and this 
touch of common sense a telephone man wouldn't have 
lasted long at Les Pres. It wasn't, however, always 
possible to duck. Sometimes there were too many shells 
in the air. Sometimes, too, the Huns used an Austrian 
88 with a flat trajectory that was on you before you 
could really hear it coming. 

On August 26th Corporal Schweitzer and Private Fred 
Isler were on the line from La Tuillerie to the First Bat- 
talion command post. A portion of this line was strung 
from old telegraph poles, and the pair carried a ladder as 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 235 

well as their testing instrument and spare wire. They had 
tested as far as the Chery crossroads when they heard a 
big shell coming. They didn't have time to get rid of 
their impedimenta and duck. The shell burst too close 
to them. It was Isler that was hit in the temple. 
Schweitzer carried him to a First Aid Station in Chery, 
but he died without regaining consciousness. 

Two days later another telephone man went. Regi- 
mental headquarters had desired all along to establish 
an observatory forward with the infantry, although obser- 
vation of any sort down there was diflScult. A point had 
been located, and it was desired to run a line to it. Such 
a line would have to cross the open ground in front of 
Boston from the woods to the left, which were full of 
bodies and under constant fire. It was practically the 
same ground that so many infantrymen and artillerymen 
had attempted before with wire that was shot out almost 
as soon as it was laid. 

Captain Gammell, Lieutenant Willis, and Private Frank 
Tiffany believed the importance of such an observatory 
made an attempt necessary, and, as you never get any- 
thing in war without trying against odds, they set out 
towards Mont Saint Martin, paying out the line as they 
went. It was a brave effort that should have succeeded. 
But the Huns sniped at the trio, probably with an Aus- 
trian 88, and Private Tiffany was hit in the leg and back. 
The two officers carried him to Les Pres Farm. He died 
shortly after. 

Such sniping was always to be looked for. It was par- 
ticularly dangerous, as was also the intermittent dropping of 
single shells about the farm at intervals of a few minutes 
all day and night. The concentrated firing of the Germans, 
while it irritated, was by no means so risky, because you 
could tell after a fashion what to expect, and when. 



£36 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The Him introduced an appreciable amount of system 
into his shelhng of the farm and its neighboring positions. 

Let us say it is 8 :30 in the evening. The last light tries 
to soften the shattered buildings. Here and there groups 
of men stand close to the walls. Several are coiling wire on 
an improvised hand reel. One glances at his watch. 

"Most time for the evening shower," he says. 

Several yawn. The groups scatter. Some slip into 
the cellar. Others seek the shelter of the walls where a 
few funk holes have been dug. In a moment there is no 
sign of life about the place except for a delayed ambulance 
plodding up the hill, and a curious head that projects 
cautiously from the cellar way. 

Whiz-z-z-z — Bang I 

The ambulance scurries into the courtyard. The cur- 
ious head disappears. 

The shells follow one another with a relentless rapidity. 
It is like the cracking of several whips with long lashes. 
The crack of one is lost in the swish of another. 

These are 105s. In the cellars and behind the walls 
the men are safe enough except from a direct hit, and 
their chances are fairly good although all the shells are 
certain to fall within a limited radius. 

The switchboard operator turns his crank and gets Regi- 
imental Headquarters for the major. 

"Raining hard," the major reports to the adjutant. 

"How hard.?" 

"Pouring." 

It's not altogether pleasant to be asked such questions 
when you're in the midst of the storm. Somebody's got 
to stick his head out to verify the size of the shells. Some- 
body's got to count them. The first time we had this 
particular drubbing the major asked us for estimates of 
the rate of fire, so that he could tell them back at Regi- 
mental Headquarters. One oSicer, in an honest effort 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 237 

to be conservative put his reply as low as a hundred 
shells a minute. Another said seventy-five. A third 
objected. 

"That's all nonsense. It can't be more than fifty a 
minute — a little less than one a second." 

The noise made him seem like a poseur. We got out 
our stop watches. The rate of fire averaged just eight 
shells a minute. 

"Pouring" was enough after a few days to indicate that 
particular strafing. At the end of twenty minutes every- 
one yawns and prepares to go about his affairs. The 
racket suddenly ceases. The curtains are thrust back. 
The men slip out, clinging close to the walls because of that 
intermittent firing which will continue all night, and which 
is more dangerous than the expensive burst we have just 
had. 

It was amusing after one of these noisy, shrieking con- 
centrations to watch men ducking at the whistle of a pro- 
jectile that would probably burst a kilometer away. They 
did have that effect. They put one's nerves, to an extent, 
on edge. You never got accustomed to the flying past 
of many fragments with a sound like the crying out of mad 
witches. Always after these exhibitions there were fresh 
holes in the roofs and walls of the farm, and usually an- 
other piece of the cellar steps would be knocked away. 

These strafings annoyed the cooks. Even here they 
clung to their fires as they had done in Lorraine. After 
one of the first concentrations we rushed out and checked 
up on the men. A cook was missing. 

"Who saw him last?" 

"I saw him in the kitchen just before the shells came 
in," a kitchen police answered. 

Hesitatingly we stepped to the open door of the kitchen. 



238 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

It was quite dark in there, except for a red glow from the 
stove against the end wall. In that red glow we saw out- 
stretched a body. We tiptoed in. The body stirred. 
The head, we could see, was hidden in the hot oven. We 
drew the man gently away. It was our cook, his face the 
color of a well-broiled lobster. For nearly twenty minutes 
he had lain there with that pandemonium raging outside, 
his head at least protected, if rather painfully so. 

Another day the surrey came up with rations. Manzo, 
the First Battalion cook looked them over and forgot all 
about the war for a time. He told everybody what Ser- 
geant Bayer and Ramstad had turned over to him. There 
was fresh beef, potatoes, rice. 

"No corn willy for dinner to-day, boys!" 

Manzo was the most popular man in the army. We had 
lived on corn willy, gold fish, and beans for so long that the 
thought of fresh food was a little heady. 

Manzo and his assistants set to work. Extraordinarily 
pleasant odors slipped from the kitchen. 

"Bet the flies don't get any of my dinner," one man 
boasted. 

It is doubtful if any Christmas feast was ever looked for- 
ward to as eagerly as that meal. Then the tragedy hap- 
pened. 

The Huns commenced to shell, and out of their schedule 
time. Mike and his assistants were forced reluctantly 
from the kitchen. They left the dinner cooking on the 
stove. Fifteen or twenty minutes' absence wouldn't hurt 
it. But all the time he was inhabiting a shelter Manzo 
was uneasy. 

The bombardment lifted. Manzo and his assistants 
crawled out and hurried to the kitchen. A moment later 
Manzo came rushing out. He saw Major Easterday. He 
flung up his hands. He burst out: 

" Maje ! The Hun ! He shoota da hell outa da kitch ! " 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 239 

The major was as interested as anyone else in the feast. 
The entire detail crowded into Manzo's temple. Few had 
the courage to gaze for more than a moment on the scene 
of sacrilege. A shell had come through the end wall. It 
had landed on the stove. It had burst there. The re- 
mains of dinner were on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. 
Strong men wept. Manzo went sadly back to his tins of 
hardtack and corn willy. For soldiers must eat. It is 
such outrages that breed hate. 

While some of these escapes had a touch of humor they 
were rather too close run for comfort. The affair of the 
dud at Regimental Headquarters, for example, might have 
had a very different ending. 

On the morning of August 22nd a 105 ripped into the 
building, through a room in which Captain Fox and Lieu- 
tenants Klots and Willis were standing, tore through 
the wall into the next room, and passed through Colonel 
Doyle's cot which fortunately was not occupied. The 
shell failed to explode. Had it exploded. Regimen tail 
Headquarters would have needed some new officers. 



XIX 

SPIES AND THE ADVANCE 

Chery Chartreuve did not prove to be the ideal com- 
mand post the Second Battahon had hoped. The Huns 
undoubtedly knew the town was thick with headquarters, 
and, logically, shelled it a good deal. So Major Wanvig 
decided to move to a cave in dead space in the steep hillside 
to the east of Chery. 

The move was originally planned for August 24th. On 
the morning of the 23rd Regimental Headquarters called for 
a number of barrages, then abruptly shortened the lines. 
This meant to everyone a strong enemy attack; perhaps 
that vast effort we had sometimes looked for to recapture 
the lost ground in another drive for Paris. As a matter 
of fact the enemy did get La Tannerie and portions of the 
south bank of the river that morning, but they were unable 
to hold their gains for very long. 

In the midst of the confusion born of this rapid and 
unexpected work Major Wanvig telephoned from Regi- 
mental Headquarters to move the P. C. at once. At that 
time the battalion staff was really too small for its routine 
work. Lieutenant Fenn gave the dijEcult task of wiring 
the new P. C. to Sergeant Froede, and tried to keep things 
going from the old headquarters. 

All afternoon and evening the batteries continued their 
firing. At midnight a complete programme came in from 
Regimental Headquarters for a rolling barrage to accom- 
pany a counter attack by our infantry. It was hurriedly 
figured, and rapid firing went on until 5 a.m. Word came 

240 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 241 

then to cease firing. It was also explained that there 
had been a misunderstanding and that the infantry had 
not counter-attacked. So much ammunition was ex- 
pended that night that stray dumps were scoured for ser- 
viceable shells. Still before many hours a counter-attack 
was staged that reached its objectives. Without inter- 
fering with its programme the Second Battalion got into 
its cave where it was never once shelled. 

That night was exceptional, but every day and every 
night an enormous quantity of ammunition was fired. 
Under such conditions there were inevitably charges of 
short firing. The Germans had a number of guns in the 
vicinity of Rheims that occasionally treated infantry and 
artillery to a few shells. These seemed to drop from be- 
hind us, although what we suffered was really only enfilade 
fire. It is not extraordinary that the infantry should have 
thought some of these puzzling shells were shorts from 
their own artillery. 

One day Captain Whelpley was sent from Regimental 
Headquarters to investigate such a charge, which had been 
advanced by Captain C. W. Harrington of the 308th In- 
fantry. 

Captain Whelpley lost some time at Les Pres Farm wait- 
ing for a guide, so that it was dark when, after a hazardous 
walk, he reached Captain Harrington's command post to 
the north of the Vesle. It seemed impracticable to re- 
turn that night, but Captain Whelpley had intended to 
start at daybreak. With the first light, however, the 
Huns put down an intensive barrage which lasted for an 
hour, and made a shell hole a pleasanter place than the 
open. This was followed by an infantry attack in strength. 
Captain Whelpley picked up a rifle and told Captain Har- 
rington he would help. With a party of men he moved to 
the edge of a patch of woods to observe and cover Harring- 
ton's left flank. He also maintained liaison with neigh- 



242 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

boring units. His party killed ten Germans and captured 
three. For this voluntary assistance to the infantry at a 
critical time he was mentioned, after the armistice, in 
division orders. If it had not been for the Colonel, who 
asked for an explanation of his absence, the story of his 
courage might not have been made public. 

Charges of short firing were always investigated but 
never amounted to anything on the Vesle. For the regi- 
ment, short-officered as it was, had developed a facility 
with figures and execution that left small room for mis- 
takes. The lessons learned here made the problems of 
the Argonne for the 305th comparatively simple. Such 
experience is not gained without a continued cost. 

The enemy got First Class Private Frederick J. Weeber 
of Battery E on August 25th. He was in his gun emplace- 
ment with another cannoneer when an over, intended for 
the Chery crossroads, fell just outside. 

" Look out I " Weeber called to his companion. 

He didn't duck low enough himself. The other man 
escaped, but Weeber was carried to join that great silent 
army that lies in the shallow graves of Champagne. 

The Huns favorite type of warfare seemed now and then 
to be aided by a brutal sort of luck. 

It was said some time back that we were taught not to 
care as much as we had for the Y. M. C. A. in Chery Chart- 
reuve. The lesson came on August 28th. Even if the 
passage was risky it was a relief to get permission to leave 
one's position and dodge to the pleasant odors and com- 
panionships of that httle store. 

On this day there was a long line of infantrymen and 
artillerymen waiting in the street to get to the counter. 
That particular shell seemed guided by an evil genius. 
It fell in the middle of the line, burst, and harvested eigh- 
teen '''casualties. Of our regiment Private Charles C. 



HISTORY OF 305tli FIELD ARTILLERY 243 

Rosalia, Battery E, was killed; and Privates Rasmus Han- 
son, Battery E, Dona J. Monette, Battery E, and Corporal 
Alexander Landsman, Battery D, were wounded. 

On the whole, though, one wonders that we didn't have 
more casualties in that heavily shelled, unprotected sector. 
We suffered a good many more than we liked, but the 
regiment felt that its intelligent discipline kept the list 
down. 

There were some duties, naturally, that had to be done 
blindly, as it were, without using brains or anything else 
to protect yourself. Barrages had to be fired whether 
your position was being shelled or not. Rocket guards, 
when their comrades scattered for the funk holes at the 
first warning shell, had to stand their ground, and take 
whatever came. 

Private Hackett of Battery B was caught like that one 
night. He remained sitting on an empty ammunition box, 
his glance always on Boston ridge, while his more fortunate 
friends got out of the way. He was pathetically reminis- 
cent of the well-sung young man who stood upon the 
burning deck when he very well knew he ought to have 
been nearly anywhere else. 

A shell burst at Private Hackett's feet. When the 
smoke and dust cleared away he still sat upon the box, and 
his gaze was still on the ridge, but now his feet were in a 
new crater. So he lived to become known admiringly 
as "The Salvage King." His own description of the mo- 
ment was: 

"Think? When the thing went off I expected to see 
myself in little pieces." 

On the Vesle spies were more dreaded than in Lorraine. 
The bitter nature of the fighting placed in a spy's hands 
the lives of more men. 

During several nights we noticed the unequal flashing 



244 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

of a lamp on Boston Ridge. The infantry there had seen 
it, too. Many efforts were made to catch the operator, 
yet none met success. If he was a spy he was an amazingly 
clever one. If he was a telephone linesman, carelessly us- 
ing, against all orders, a light as he worked on a wire, he 
was lucky far beyond his due. At any rate after a few 
nights the flashing ceased. 

The order from General Bullard, which follows, tells its 
own story: 

P. C. Third Army Corps 
31 August 1918—21:30 Hr. 

G-3 Order 

No. 56 

1. During the attack of the enemy against Fismette, August 
27th someone in American uniform ran among our troops 
shouting that further resistance was useless and that one of 
our officers advised everybody to surrender. These state- 
ments were absolutely incorrect because further resistance 
was not useless and no officer had advised surrender. Never- 
theless, because of lack of training and understanding, the 
results were as follows: Out of 190 of our troops engaged in 
this fight, a few were killed or wounded, about 30 retreated 
fighting and escaped, and perhaps 140 surrendered or were 
captured. 

2. A person who spreads such an alarm is either an enemy in 
our uniform, or one of our own troops who is disloyal and a 
traitor, or one of our own troops who has become a panic- 
stricken coward. WHOEVER HE IS, HE SHOULD BE 
KILLED ON THE SPOT. 

3. In a battle there is no time to inquire into the identity or 
motives of persons who create panic, disorganization or 
surrender. It is the duty of every officer and soldier to kUl 
on the spot any person who in a fight urges or advises anyone 
to surrender or to stop fighting. It makes no difference 
whether the person is a stranger or a friend, or whether he is 
an officer or a private. 




Draiiii liij CiirpDnit Kiios. Ilattery D 

"The Artillery Would Follow in Support" 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 245 

4. The day before the attack on Fismette a German soldier 
was seen and mortally womided by our men in Fismes, far 
inside our lines. He was well stocked with food. He had 
lived many years in America. It is possible that he was to 
get himself an American uniform and, because of his knowl- 
edge of our language and customs, was to be used to create 
doubt and disorganization among om- men. 

5. Division Commanders will cause this order to be read to 
each company or platoon in such manner as will insure that 
every member of the command thoroughly understands its 
contents. 

By Command of Major General Bullard : 
F. W. Clark 
Lieut. Col., G. S., 
A. C. of S., G-3 

The attack against Fismette, mentioned in the foregoing 
order, was one of the last determined offensive efforts of 
the enemy on this front. It became clear about the same 
time that a vast German retrograde movement was in 
contemplation. Any change from Les Pres Farm would 
be a welcome one. 

The intensity of our firing increased, while Jerry's 
waned. Undoubtedly we were making his plans difficult 
to carry through. 

On the night of September 3rd the observatories re- 
ported many fires in Perles and its vicinity. A huge sheet 
of flame advertised the explosion of a big ammunition 
dump. Towards morning of the 4th the Hun-made fires 
thickened. Evidently great quantities of stores and the 
buildings that had housed them were being destroyed as 
an alternative to leaving them for the Americans. The 
Hun fire nearly ceased. Anyone who was there will re- 
call the blessed relief of being able to stroll about those 
positions at last with a feeling of comparative safety. 

Word came that the infantry was already moving for- 



246 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

ward. The artillery would follow in support. Strong 
combat patrols were already in contact with the enemy. 
It was understood that if a battalion of infantry were sent 
as an advance party across the Vesle, Battery D of our 
regiment would cross too. But the Hun went faster than 
the most optimistic had prophesied, and the entire regi- 
ment started forward on the 5 th. 

The old positions were policed and equipment made 
ready on the night of the 4th. Early the next morning 
the limbers came down from the echelon, whips cracked, 
and, after those unpleasant weeks about Les Pres and 
Chery, the regiment was on the road again. 

Since they had been widely scattered, the batteries 
followed the most convenient routes while agents kept 
them in touch with battalion headquarters. 

Regimental Headquarters went forward to the desolate 
ruins of Fismes and established itself in a cellar. Oppo- 
site the cellar steps an alley ran between tumbled walls. 
The horses, motorcycles, and bicycles were placed here 
as the safest place in the vicinity. 

Shortly after the party had arrived Private Wallace 
Fisher, of the Headquarters Company, motorcycle driver 
for the Second Battalion, entered this alley and started to 
make some repairs on his machine. He was the only man 
there, so no one saw the thing happen. In the cellar they 
heard a dud fall, and another shell come over and detonate 
across the street. Corporal Tucker ran from the cellar 
to see if the horses had been struck. Two were down. 
The third, which, curiously, had been the center one of the 
trio, was unhurt. 

Tucker saw that both motorcycles had been smashed. 
He saw Fisher lying beside one, and called to him. Fisher 
didn't answer, and the scout went closer. Fisher had been 
killed. 

Tucker reported back across the street, and a party 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 247 

buried Fisher in the garden behind headquarters, making 
for his grave a rough cross from the wood of a sphntered 
door. 

BattaHon commanders with their captains or recon- 
naissance officers started forward early to select new posi- 
tions in the vicinity of Ville Savoie and Saint Gilles. It 
rained hard, and the complaints were bitter and many 
— at first. A little later the men realized what a blessing 
the bad weather was. For the Huns still held control of 
the air. With better visibility he would have dropped 
more bombs and directed better fire on our columns which 
crawled by daylight along crowded roads. He would 
have interfered more disagreeably with the taking up of 
the new positions. One fellow did appear, flying low 
to get beneath the mist. The battery machine gunners 
greeted him with shouts, sending such well-directed 
streams of machine gun bullets at his plane that he left 
the cannoneers to settle their guns in peace. 

While it was perfectly obvious these positions would 
be occupied only a short time, they were consolidated, 
after the habit of the regiment, as if they were intended 
for the duration of the war. The cannoneers dug in, and 
officers and details figured firing data, and ran long dif- 
ficult lines for only a few hours' use. First Battalion 
Headquarters had moved out of Les Pres Farm to a house 
near Mont Saint Martin. It was necessary for its bat- 
teries to be in telephonic liaison with it. 

After only a little firing the order came to move again 
at midnight. The limbers had been echeloned in the 
neighborhood, so that there was no delay starting. Every- 
one knew the next stop would be nearer the enemy, and 
that the guns must be in position and hidden before day- 
fight. 

The batteries rendezvoused near the crossroads between 



248 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Fismes and La Tannerie. Battalion Headquarters went 
ahead to the crossroads. It threatened to be an unhealthy- 
place. The Huns did commence to shell it, but most of 
their projectiles fell to the right in low ground. Here 
again the rain proved its friendliness, for in the wet soil 
the majority of the shells buried themselves without ex- 
ploding. 

Nevertheless such waiting was nervous business, for 
there was always the prospect that the Hun would sweep, 
or at least shift his deflection. He seemed, however, 
to have lost some of his skill, or else he imagined himself 
directly on his target. The column grew restless. 

"What's slowing us up?" 

"Where are we going anyway?" 

Whispers filtered back. 

"We're going across the Vesle. It's the bridges that 
are slowing us up." 

There was a dramatic quality about this realization. 
Across the Vesle and to those very heights from which 
Jerry had pounded the regiment for so long! 

Everyone was curious, too, as to the kind of bridge he 
would find, and about the cost at which any bridge must 
have been built in such a place. The news, moreover, 
brought some apprehension. If the crossing of the Marne 
had caused misgivings, the passage of the Vesle created 
graver ones. The Hun artillery must surely have it reg- 
istered. It was inconceivable one could get over with- 
out a shelling. Perhaps that explained the delay. The 
bridge might be down, or it might be blocked by dead 
animals and broken carriages. 

Long drawn, the command to get ahead ran down the 
line. Horses stumbled forward. The luminous faces of 
wrist watches appeared like fireflies here and there as the 
men took a check on the time. 

Almost immediately the rumbling of wheels on planks 



HISTORY OF 303tli FIELD ARTILLERY 249 

came back. Word was passed along that there would be 
two streams to cross. At each men would dismount and 
lead their animals over most carefully, for there were no 
side guards or rails, and the column wasn't using any 
flares to guide its feet. 

The carriages rumbled on the planking. Do's\ti below, 
between steep banks, rushed a narrow and black stream — 
the Ardre, about a kilometer from its junction with the 
Vesle. 

There was no disturbance there, and the column was 
swallowed by the crumbling outskirts of Fismes. Just 
beyond the road swept to the right into the main highway 
to Braine and so came upon the Vesle. 

The only light was from Jerry's distant flares and star 
shells. It wasn't much. It became clear to the men that 
the enemy was after this second bridge. The rustle or 
shriek of arriving shells was perpetual, but there was an 
odd scarcity of detonations, and there was no halting. 

At the river itself the reason became apparent. Again 
the enemy had failed to register quite perfectly, and again 
the low ground and the rain were friendly. Most of the 
German projectiles were duds. 

The river was scarcely wider than the Ardre, but the 
bridge if anything, seemed narrower and riskier than the 
other. Drivers led their horses and cannoneers manned 
the wheels. There was only one casualty, and that 
aroused a laugh that made itself audible above the shells. 
Musician Scharf, acting as messenger, was crowded over 
the side, and splashed in the deep, unpleasant current. 
They pulled him out, and he went on his way, laughing, 
too. 

The column hurried through Fismette, into which the 
regiment had sent so many shells; and scattered into the 
positions selected during the reconnaissances of the day 
before. 



250 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

The First BattaUon commenced to dig in a kilometer 
south of Blanzy, near a confluent of the Vesle. 

The Second BattaHon, which had come from its Chery 
home without taking up intermediate positions, swung 
more to the west, and with its batteries side by side estab- 
hshed itself on the slope of a deep ravine across from 
Perles. By daylight every battery was in place. 

The First Battalion settled its command post in a road 
repairman's house on the Fismette-Blanzy road. There 
was no cellar. The only protection was the stone walls 
of the building. 

The Second Battalion chose a German dugout in the 
ravine between Perles and its guns. 

Regimental Headquarters moved forward from Fismes 
on September 8th and came upon what proved to be about 
its nastiest experience of the war. 

It was the custom for our headquarters to remain with 
infantry brigade headquarters. 

Near Blanzy was the cave of La Petite Logette, a huge 
hole, which the Hun had long occupied, digging from it 
many galleries. It was a perfect shelter except for one 
thing. Its very appearance proclaimed it a gas trap. 

Regimental Headquarters says that it had no oppor- 
tunity to judge, so it established its command post with 
Brigade Headquarters in the cave. Engineer and medical 
officers worked nearly all day to purify the air of this 
formidable hole. They declared the main portion was 
safe when Colonel Doyle arrived the latter part of the 
afternoon, but even then the place retained an atmosphere 
unhealthy and ominous. The doctors had boarded up 
the more suspicious of the galleries, and they warned the 
men against invading the remainder. 

The men, however, were very tired. The mere fact 
that such a place had been chosen as command post was 
a recommendation to them that it was safe. Some of 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 251 

the galleries were a good deal quieter than the main por- 
tion of the cave. 

Regimental Headquarters set to work at La Petite 
Logette, quite a different affair from Regimental Head- 
quarters on the table in the mess hall of Jl at Camp 
Upton. 

There were about forty men attached to it at that time. 
After dark, when all the soldiers, not on missions, should 
have been in the large cave or near the entrance, a check 
was taken and a number reported as missing. The search- 
ers entered the forbidden galleries and found a number 
asleep or resting, quite unaware of the risk they ran. 
All were gassed to some degree. They were removed and 
treated, and the night's work went on. 

About midnight a new condition stealthily disclosed 
itself. Men sniffed the air of the main cave. Clearly 
it was poisoned. So much gas could not have escaped 
from the galleries. The Huns, beyond question, must 
have buried gas shells in the floor of the cave, surrounding 
them with an acid, perhaps, to eat through the casings 
and so release the fumes when the occupants were with- 
out suspicion. 

Most of those who had spent the evening in the cave 
were unfit for duty. There was no other shelter near by, 
but the Colonel ordered everyone out of the cave. 

"The entire medical staff (officers and men)," to quote 
Colonel Doyle's account of the evening, "had been gassed 
and were unable to give any assistance. Colonel Doyle 
alone remained in the cave, giving aid to a constant stream 
of gassed men." 

As is usual with slight cases of mustard gas poisoning 
eyes suffered most of all, and many were temporarily 
blinded. After their eyes had been bathed with a weak 
alkaline solution the victims were hurriedly evacuated. 
A few were more seriously affected. 



252 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Colonel Doyle worked until 4:30 in the morning when 
he was forced to leave the cave. A medical officer of the 
Engineers, who had been summoned, took his place. 

The effects of the gas on the Colonel were slow. He 
stayed by the telephone all day. It was only after a hard 
day's work, in fact, towards 10 o'clock, that he lost the 
use of his eyes. As long as he could talk, however, he 
insisted on staying with his regiment, and he was not 
evacuated until midnight. The regiment did not lose 
him for long, but he suffered from his experience for many 
months afterward. 

The list of officers and men more or less gassed in this 
extraordinary incident includes: Colonel Doyle, Cap- 
tain Gammell, Captain Mitchell, Lieutenant Klots (his 
second wound stripe). Sergeant Bromm, Sergeant Mam- 
luck, Sergeant-major Miller, and Gillette, Hoffman, 
Kurash, Palmer, PuUen, Saloman, and Wallach. 

The regiment had struggled through its most difficult 
days with insufficient officers. When the word came 
that it was to receive replacements, officers and men 
took the news skeptically. Only two or three had come 
in before the crossing of the Vesle, but now the rush com- 
menced. 

First Lieutenant H. J. Svenson had arrived on Sep- 
tember 1st, but he was invalided away on the 14th. 
Second Lieutenants George E. Putnam and Jesse W. 
Stribling had reported on the 3rd, but the real influx 
came when the batteries were in their new positions 
across the Vesle. 

On September 8th Second Lieutenants Stedman B. 
Hoar, and David J. Macleod, a veterinarian, reported. 
On the 9th came Second Lieutenants Osbon W. Bullen, 
Johnston Copelin, Raymond E. Dockery, Leon H. Hatte- 
mer, and Harold Holcomb. On the 10th the arriving 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD AETILLERY 253 

stream of subalterns seemed a beautiful dream. That 
day brought Second Lieutenants Roy H. Camp, Thadeus 
R. Geisert, Edward W. Hart, Albert B. Hill, Waldo 
E. McKee, Thomas M. Norton, Reuben T. Taylor, 
John G. Teichmoeller, Philip A. Wilhite, and Charles L. 
Graham. 

These were practically all young men from the Artillery 
School at Saumur. They were distributed among the 
three headquarters and the batteries, and made the fighting 
between the Vesle and the Aisne far simpler than it had 
been in the short-handed days of Les Pres Farm. 

For self-sacrificing work in the Vesle-Aisne fighting 
Lieutenant Thayer, Corporal Ramsdell, and Privates 
Shackman and McCune received divisional citations. 

This campaign was in many ways far less exacting than 
the preceding one. The regiment, to be sure, was opposite 
the pivotal point of the Hun line between Soissons and 
Rheims, but, although there was plenty of artillery op- 
posite, the shooting seemed poorer, and there were fewer 
casualties. 

The weather played its share, too. The brilliant, 
warm days of Les Pres Farm were replaced by much mist 
and rain. The nights, too were colder. The men, 
therefore, did not need much urging to dig themselves 
in. Very few German dugouts could be used, because 
their openings were in the direction of hostile fire. But 
German straw could be carried from its old home to the 
new hillside apartments of the Americans. Tiny, living 
souvenirs may have come with that straw, but one ac- 
quired those anyway, and it seemed a small price then, 
before the S. O. S. inspectors got at the regiment, to pay 
for warmth. 

There's no point in wasting words on cooties. Prac- 
tically every man and officer knows all there is to say 
about them. 



254 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

Observation brought its difficulties here also. There 
was no satisfactory observatory near the First Battalion 
Command post, so Lieutenant Thayer pushed forward to 
the very front line of the infantry. On the edge of the 
ruins of Serval he found a deserted house. It stood on 
high ground in a salient of the American front line, so that 
it was exposed to fire from three sides. Yet while nearly 
everything else in Serval had been destroyed, this building 
was comparatively whole. 

Lieutenant Thayer didn't attempt to get his men in or 
run a telephone line until after dark. The line was long 
and difficult to keep open, but for the most part com- 
munication was maintained. By using extreme care the 
presence of observers in the house was kept from the 
Germans. Only once while the regiment was in that posi- 
tion did the place get a direct hit. Yet it was necessary 
to make reliefs, to carry in food, to bring water from a well 
in Serval, and to have telephone men coming along the line 
whenever it went out. 

You might hear such a conversation as this in the lower 
room, after a telephone man has crawled in and lies on his 
back, catching his breath. 

"You fixed the line all right," says one of the observers 
gratefully. " What kind of a trip did you have.f* " 

"As per usual. Kid," the telephone man explains as he 
rests. "All the way across, Jerry threw G. I. cans at me 
as if they didn't cost a cent. When I gets to the foot of 
the hill here a machine gun goes pop-pop-pop-pop. I 
plays possum, but for a long time, every time I lifts my 
head, pop-pop-pop-pop he goes again. Honest, George, 
I've never felt very harsh towards the Bosche, but, George, 
when they turn a machine gun loose on one poor linesman 
every time he moves his little finger, I say they ain't right- 
minded folks. Can't tell me any atrocity stories I won't 
swallow now, George." 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY ^55 

The interior of the stone house was given over to per- 
petual watchfulness. Old clothing was hung across the 
front windows so that no one would be silhouetted for the 
benefit of the Germans, and behind these the instruments 
were placed. Day and night Lieutenant Thayer and his 
scouts watched the Germans, and the effect of our fire, 
within calling distance, practically, of his victims. 

Positions very much less exposed didn't fare so well. 
The Supply Company, when the regiment crossed the river 
moved forward from Nesles Woods to the grove behind Les 
Pres Farm in which Battery C had been stationed until 
September 5 th. By all the rules of the game that should 
have been a safer place than Nesles Woods, The Supply 
Company had two men killed during the war, and both 
were lost in this place. 

This tragedy recalled the earlier charges of short-firing. 
With all of the batteries far forward no such explanation 
could be advanced here. Evidently the Hun guns near 
Rheims were at work again. The Supply Company men 
indulged in the wildest hazards to account for this strange 
shelling. There was talk of supernaturally concealed guns 
left by the Germans when they had retreated. There were 
whispers of an extraordinary underground railway on 
which the Bosche moved big guns to convenient trap doors 
within our lines. For, until the Rheims explanation was 
generally passed around, this fire did look like magic. 

It was on September 11th that these shells got Wagoners 
Jackob E. Jackson and Fiori Fillici. 

There had been some firing, but at three o'clock it 
lifted, and the men poured from their funk holes and re- 
turned to work. 

Jackson was cleaning harness at one of the wagons when 
the company clerk came up and spoke to him. The wag- 
goner was very happy, for he had just that day received 
a letter from home, telling him that his wife had presented 



256 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

him with a son. He displayed the letter to the clerk, and 
they chatted cheerfully about the future. With the Huns 
falling back all along the line it might be only a few months 
before Jackson would be on his way home to this new ar- 
rival. The clerk promised to look after the additional 
government allowance which the baby's birth would give 
Jackson's wife. 

"My wife," Jackson said, "needs the money very much, 
because things are so high in the States," 

He said nothing more after that. The clerk climbed 
into the wagon to search for something the captain had 
left there, and at once the Huns resumed their odd shelling. 
The third shell, the clerk said, seemed to burst directly 
beside the wagon. A piece hit him in the leg, inflicting, 
however, only a slight wound. When he climbed down 
he saw Jackson lying on the ground, a medical orderly 
bending over him. A piece of the shell had struck 
him in the back of the head. He died on the way to the 
hospital. 

Fillici was killed during the same bombardment, al- 
though he was a short distance from the echelon. He had 
started on a horse without saddle or bridle to get some 
medicine from the Veterinary Detachment. Fillici had 
volunteered for this service as the company veterinarian 
was occupied at the moment. He had been advised to 
take a short cut, but instead chose the main road. 

The news of his death was brought by French soldiers 
who had been working on the road. The shell, they said, 
had burst very close to Fillici, knocking him from his horse. 
Fillici had been killed, but the horse had not been 
scratched. The Frenchmen said that the same shell had 
killed a captain and a lieutenant of the 305th Infantry. 

When one considers the number of shells that fall idly 
it is astonishing to count up the amount of damage some 
one shell, better aimed, or carried by chance, will accom- 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 257 

plish. The First BattaHon got one of these at its com- 
mand post near Blanzy on September 15th. 

For days shells of all calibers had fallen about the place 
without accomplishing any more damage than tearing up 
the soil. Then this one arrived. It fell at the picket line. 
The horses stood in a row. Private Aimer M. Aasgard 
groomed a horse near the end of the line. Near him sat a 
group of telephone men, winding wire on makeshift reels — 
a necessary diversion of the telephone detail when there 
was nothing else to do. The men heard the whine of the 
approaching shell and realized from their acquired judg- 
ment that it would fall very near. They called out a 
warning and ducked. Aasgard wasn't quick enough. A 
tiny fragment cut into his neck, severing the jugular vein. 
Dr. Cronin hurried to the doomed man. Aasgard died 
within a few minutes. 

The same shell caught Corporal Leonard Cook of the 
telephone detail in the knee, disabling him and putting 
him out of the war. An ambitious telephone man, he was 
evacuated grumblingly, and was never returned to the 
regiment. Other fragments cost the detail eight more of 
its vanishing horses. 

But these serious moments were the exception. Life 
north of the Vesle was far less complicated than it had 
been about Les Pres. There were, of course, minor cas- 
ualties. 

First Class Private McGranaghan gave Sergeant Hickey 
an opportunity to distinguish himself. McGrahaghan was 
hit while working on the Serval line. Hickey, who had 
been on duty in the observatory, picked him up and car- 
ried him over a crest exposed to machine gun fire to the 
first aid station. 

These individual instances of courage were innumerable. 
Men, however, don't say much about what they do them- 
selves. Unless someone happened to see their bravery it 



258 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

drifted into that vast blurred background of devotion and 
sacrifice against which the American soldier fought. 

Between the Vesle and the Aisne the Second Battalion 
was even more fortunate than the First. Major Wanvig's 
command didn't have a single casualty in the Perles posi- 
tions. Hun airmen gave it one bad night, and might have 
done a lot of damage. 

A bomber created the impression that he had located 
the emplacements, for he dropped a number of flares over 
them, and followed with two bombs in the ravine, which 
missed Battalion Headquarters, and one on the slope close 
to the guns, which splintered a number of trees. 

A group of men from Battery D had a close run of it. 
They had made themselves comfortable in a large German 
dugout whose only overhead cover was a sheet of elephant 
iron. At the first flare they decided there might be safer 
places, and sought one. When they returned a few mo- 
ments later, after the plane had throbbed away, they 
found their pleasant home, a mass of twisted elephant iron, 
ploughed up dirt, and ruined equipment. The third bomb 
had made a direct hit on the dugout in which they had 
just before been crowded for warmth. 

The regiment fired as persistently here as it had done 
in the Les Pres and Chery positions. Barrage after bar- 
rage was thrown ahead of our infantry on La Petite Mon- 
tague, which because of its pivotal situation was of great 
strategic importance. Before it was captured the order 
came for the regiment to move to other pastures. 



XX 

THE ARGONNE 

The first intimation the 305th had that it would be re- 
heved was brought by advance parties from General 
Garibaldi's Italian division. The sight of these strange 
faces and uniforms indicated to everyone that the regiment 
was going out for a well-earned rest. How deceitful that 
opinion was, everyone remembers; but the occasion was 
important and exciting. All our men of Italian parentage 
greeted the newcomers with joy and hospitality. There 
was much excited conversation. There were more inter- 
preters than could possibly be used. 

While the Italians reconnoitered the Americans packed 
— ^joyously, too. The prospect of billets, baths, and 
cooked food was alluring after more than two months in the 
line. The thought of quiet after a month of such fight- 
ing as the Vesle had developed, was frankly welcome. 

The movement commenced on the night of September 
15-16. No one had any idea where he was going, except 
that it was to the rear. And the belief in billets was 
touchingly firm. 

Down roads on which they had advanced under shell 
fire, the columns wound through the fragmentary and 
odorus remains of Fismette and Fismes, past Les Pres 
Farm, at which some fists were shaken, through Chery 
Chartreuve for the last time, and to the crossroads just 
beyond where the two battalions rendezvoused. 

When the last man was up, the regiment took the road 
to the left through Dravegny where our infantry was re- 

259 



260 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

grouping, Cohan, and Coulognes, to the Bois de Meuniere 
which was selected for the first bivouac. Between eight 
o'clock in the evening and three in the morning the column 
covered 23 kilometers. 

After the exhausting work of the past two months it was 
a tired, nearly voiceless colunm that rode away from the 
flares, the flashes, and the star shells. Many drivers slept 
on their horses. The cannoneers, doomed to walk, stum- 
bled forward, only half awake. 

There was a delay of nearly half an hour just before 
reaching the bivouac. The column halted as if automat- 
ically. The men rested where they were, deciding it was 
quite like old times. Impatience seized a group of offi- 
cers, and they rode forward to learn, if they could, why the 
halt continued. Ahead the road was open save for one 
obstacle. A machine gun cart rested in the middle. On 
the seat was a dozing driver. Attached to the cart was a 
mule, supremely indifferent and content. The group 
awakened the driver hurriedly. 

"Reckon," he yawned by way of explanation, "Jinny's 
decided she's gone far enough to-night." 

Jinny and her master suffered the application of united 
brute force, and watched the column go by. 

It was on this first stage that Battery F wandered 
astray. In the dark it mistook the 306th column for our 
own, and followed it for some time, until scouts located it, 
explained the situation, and led it back to the fold. 

During the day men fought the light and the noise 
again for a little sleep, and at 8 o'clock moved out once 
more. In the early morning the carriages rumbled across 
the Marne on an engineers' bridge at Vermeuil. The 
average man's sensations were very different from those 
aroused by his previous crossing at Chateau Thierry. And 
again the river was a dividing line. The country seemed 
immeasurably less disturbed to the south. The march 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 261 

lost its sense of being made under the menace of aeroplanes. 

And at Mareuil-le-Pont, where that twenty kilometer 
stage ended, an officer brought joy with several motor 
trucks assigned to the regiment for the transportation of a 
certain number of dismounted men. Sixty were chosen 
from each organization and put in charge of Lieutenants 
Brassel, Putnam, and Copelin. Although it wasn't gen- 
erally known at the time, the destination of these trucks 
was La Grange, three kilometers northwest of St. Menne- 
hould. The rest of the regiment, condemned to the long 
hike, continued to foresee a glorious rest ahead. The 
rumor was that the billets were four days' march away. 

Mareuil-le-Pont had other cheering features. The 
weather still held fair. The country, not yet scourged by 
autumn, was pleasant to men fresh from the gashed slopes 
and devastated forests of battlefields. The gun park, 
the picket lines, the straight rows of shelter tents were 
arranged in pleasant fields; and in the village the civilian 
population went about its business. There were shops, 
for the first time since Done, and they specialized in a fresh 
cheese that nearly everyone added to his rations. Best 
of all the colunm didn't form again until 10 'clock of the 
morning of the 18th, so that there was all day and a large 
part of the night for rest. 

The roads now were not particularly congested. The 
regiment traveled rapidly, which is far less fatiguing than 
a snail's march with many halts. 

It was generally known by this time that the French 
were routing the column, and were keeping it off the con- 
gested main lines of supplies. Therefore twenty kilo- 
meters were covered by 11 o'clock on the morning of the 
18th to the summit of a high hill at Greuves, near Epernay. 

The weather threatened here, but the place had matters 
of interest. It was in the heart of the Champagne coun- 
try, and the wine was plentiful, cheap, and harmless, as 



262 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

far as one could judge. Thirst was excusable after the 
last two miles of that stage. The horses would have given 
up the grade if the men hadn't encouraged them and put 
shoulders to the wheels. 

At 4 o'clock the next morning the regiment was on the 
road again. Its route lay through the plains of the 
Marne, a rich country sheltering farms and vineyards 
which had not experienced the harsher touches of war. 
There was an added spur to muscles and spirits this day. 
For wasn't it the fourth stage? Wouldn't night see every- 
one in the paradise of rest billets? 

But the march closed towards noon at Ferme Notre 
Dame, twenty kilometers south-east of Chalons. 

"That's all right," men said wisely. "They're putting 
another day on the march to make it easier for us. We'll 
sleep to-night and get there to-morrow." 

Yet certainly no one would have chosen to stop at Ferme 
Notre Dame to make things easier. It was a place at once 
beautiful and abominable. There was only one well at 
some distance from the main buildings, so that it took five 
hectic hours to water the animals once. 

Word passed around that the start wouldn't be made 
until late the next morning. It fitted in. A short march, 
then rest, baseball, baths, delousing! 

The regiment didn't move out in fact, until 6:30 of the 
20th, but the stage lengthened into twenty kilometers, and 
ended during the middle of the afternoon in meadows near 
Cheppes, on the bank of the little river Guenelle. For the 
first time doubt appeared in men's faces. 

"What does it mean? " they asked one another. 

"Ah," some answered carelessly, "we'll get there to- 
morrow, or, if not, the day after. This isn't so bad." 

Nor was it for men or animals. The one bathed and 
washed clothing in the river; the other grazed contentedly 
in the lush meadows. 



fr '. . id 







A Well Shelled Road 




Off Dutv for a Moment 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 263 

Suspicions, too, were lulled when Captain Reed was 
ordered by Brigade Headquarters to reconnoiter to the 
south in the vicinity of Bassu for the next night's bivouac. 
Swinging further to the south, of course, meant rest. But 
the next morning that hope died. A change was an- 
nounced. The regiment wasn't going south, and French 
officers appeared and warned commanders of the necessity 
of seeking concealment most carefully from now on. At 
5:30 on the afternoon of September 21st the regiment 
moved out — to the north-east, and everybody knew it 
meant the front again. 

The attitude of the men in face of this abrupt change 
was stimulating. No matter how brave or blood-thirsty 
he may be, a soldier who expects rest and is suddenly shot 
back into the line must experience a vivid disappointment. 
The 305th had the air of having foreseen such a fate. They 
talked cheerfully of a huge, new offensive which couldn't 
possibly be successful without the presence of our regiment. 
If there was any grumbling it was done under the breath. 

The march was quick. After twenty-five kilometers 
the column halted at 11 p.m. in Busy-le-Repos, and found 
a confusion already suggestive of the front. The 304th 
had bivouaced in and about the town. Few billets were 
available for headquarters, and the nearby fields were 
crowded. The regiment settled itself where it could. 

If there had remained any doubts they would have been 
dispelled here. Captain Olney, from Brigade Headquar- 
ters; Captain Reed, from the First Battalion, Lieutenant 
Wilhite, from the Second Battalion; Lieutenant Klots, 
from Regimental Headquarters; and officers from the 
304th and 306th were ordered forty kilometers forward 
by motor truck to Les Islettes to make a reconnaissance, 
locate positions, and figure data. 

This party left on the morning of the 22nd — the advance 
guard of the Brigade into the Argonne. 



264 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




^efoo^dcAr/s 



Ccha}o'(ie 




j^^ '^ 


Y-^->-P 


^ 


.w^. 


^ V ^l 


^ 


- \? 


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■ FLORE'NT".''-"' 



Drawn by Corporal Ttieker, Bq. Co. 
The jumping-off place 

At Les Islettes they were met by French corps artillery 
officers, assigned to support the Americans. These French- 
men had foreseen everything, which was fortunate in view 
of the difficult and tricky Argonne terrain. 

They took our officers to the point near Florent which 
they had selected for the regimental echelon. They led 
them, then, carefully forward almost to the front lines, 
and pointed out positions for the First Battalion a kilo- 
meter due east of La Chalade, and others for the Second 
Battalion a kilometer and a half north-west of the First. 

These choices were clearly the best available, so the 
reconnaissance party set to work checking up targets and 
data. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 265 

While they figured in the forest the regiment resumed 
its march, leaving Busy-le-Repos on the night of the 22nd 
to bivouac a few hours the next day at Verrieres. The 
column went on that night to the vicinity of St. Menne- 
hould. 

For the moment Regimental Headquarters established 
itself at the Florent echelon from where it superintended 
the regrouping of the command and made arrangements 
for its entry into position at the earliest possible moment. 

The men who had come by truck from Mareuil-le-Pont 
had had a good rest. Moreover, they were full of the gos- 
sip of the sector, and possessed rumors without end about 
what was going to happen. 

The situation was, in many respects, fruitful of rumors. 

Positive orders came from the highest command that no 
American soldier was to risk exposure to enemy observa- 
tion unless he wore a French uniform. That made scouts 
and observers near the front line masquerade. It also 
meant that a surprise attack on a gigantic scale was in the 
wind. Yet no one suspected then how big the scheme 
really was. The terrain, indeed, seemed badly suited to 
anything of the sort. War here had practically paused 
for more than four years. The reason lay before every- 
one's eyes — the woods and the hills of the Argonne. 

Here, one of the few points where position warfare had 
persisted, both the French and the Huns had developed 
deep and elaborate trench systems. A large proportion 
of the work was in cement. There was an elaborate net 
of barbed wire. The prospect of attacking such defenses 
head-on was not cheerful. It was whispered, however, 
that our doughboys were waiting only for our support 
to go over. 

The situation, meantime, remained placid. There was 
very little firing. As far as could be learned there were 
no raids. Either the Bosche had been fooled and didn't 



266 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

know what was gathering, or else he was waiting with 
a httle surprise of his own. A day or two now would 
show. 

Both battalions moved into the positions selected near 
La Chalade during the early morning of September 24th. 
Regimental Headquarters at the same time went forward 
to Ferme Ferdinand. 

Those positions were trying on both officers and men, 
not because of enemy harassing but because of their 
exhausting natural difficulties. Out in front in No- 
Man's Land, and for a considerable distance back the 
forest survived only as a ghostly collection of stripped 
tree trunks. Two thousand meters to the rear, however, 
where our guns were placed, it had suffered less, and there 
was a dense underbrush with practically no tracks. The 
cannoneers, in consequence, had to chop a way in. The 
pieces were unlimbered on the road, then manhandled a 
half a kilometer through the brush to their emplacements. 
That would have been hard enough by daylight. Before 
the dawn it was a task for a Hercules with the vision of a 
cat. Still it was done before sunrise and the work of 
consolidation was got under way. 

These positions were in a piece of forest known as the 
Bois de Haut Batis. They were near some old French 
reserve trenches in which our infantry waited for the 
great moment. The doughboys didn't seem to know 
exactly what was going to happen to them, or to care 
particularly. The difficulties of the terrain failed to 
appal them. They watched curiously the artillerymen 
as they went about their labor. 

Ammunition was the chief difficulty. The firing would 
be intense. Consequently vast quantities of shells would 
be required at the emplacements. Time was short. 
Word to commence firing might come at any minute. 
Yet a point on the road about 400 meters from the guns 



HISTORY OF S05th FIELD ARTILLERY 267 

was the nearest place to which projectiles could be trans- 
ported on wheels. The G. S. carts dropped them there, 
and the battery men carried them one by one through 
the tangled underbrush. 

This work went on during September 24th and 25th, 
while everyone wondered if the Bosche wouldn't observe 
such diligence and compliment it with a little heavy fire. 

An odd incident happened on the 25th. There hadn't 
been a single high explosive burst near these positions, nor 
were there any later, yet that day six gas shells fell among 
the pieces of the First Battalion, or in the road nearby. 

One of these shells cost the regiment a valuable mes- 
senger. Private Carlos Montgomery was thrown from his 
bicycle by the explosion. Pieces of the casing struck him 
in the knee, and before he could get his mask on the gas 
had burned his eyes severely. He was evacuated and 
invalided to the States. 

Yet within a few yards of where he was injured another 
gas shell fell beneath a G. S. cart, which five men were 
manhandling, and failed to injure or gas one of the five. 

From the start in the Argonne it was clear that new dif- 
ficulties of observation would be met. Here and there 
were observatories cleverly concealed in trees or on the 
heights above the Biesme River which ran through the 
French trench system. Officers and men, disguised as 
poilus, climbed into these, but found the outlook from 
all unsatisfactory. 

Communication, on the other hand, was comparatively 
simple in the first Argonne position. Regimental Head- 
quarters, the two battalions, the observatories, and the 
infantry were closely grouped. Later, when the advance 
commenced, those in liaison with the front line had a good 
deal of difficulty keeping headquarters informed as to the 
details of a changing and hazardous situation. 



268 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

At last the orders came down. The regiment would 
open fire at 2 :30 on the morning of September 26th. 

The volume of noise that burst forth at that moment 
was greater than the Argonne had ever known. To the 
men serving the guns the terrific uproar came as a sur- 
prise. They had not suspected such a mass of artillery 
had been collected for the drive. 

The Germans, whatever they had learned, were stunned 
by this merciless fire. It was continued until the in- 
fantry went over shortly after daybreak. It shifted then 
to a rolling barrage. It had finally, because of the rapid 
advance of the infantry and shortage of ammunition, to 
cease altogether for a time. 

Runners brought back word of what was happening out 
in front. Over the cement trenches and strong points, 
through the mazes of barbed wire, and the natural bar- 
riers of the forest, the infantry made that first day an 
advance of three kilometers. The artillery would have 
to move forward at once. The limbers were hurried down 
and the pieces went over difiicult roads through the old 
French trench system three kilometers to the vicinity of 
La Harazee. 

Regimental Headquarters established itself in the re- 
mains of the town, and the two battalions went into 
position side by side within two thousand meters of the 
new front line. 

There were dugouts here, large, luxurious, and fairly 
safe. So the personnel of the three headquarters and the 
batteries made themselves comfortable. 

But, it developed, there would be no let up in the drive. 
It would go on at once. New missions were assigned. 
It was during those days that citizen officers and soldiers 
displayed an exceptional cleverness and adaptability. 
They located their guns and their targets on the map, and, 
frequently without registration, as frequently without 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 269 




Dravm by Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co. 
The vicinity of La Harazee 



observation even, blazed merrily away. It was like firing 
a revolver in the dark yet when the regiment moved for- 
ward it could check up on its accuracy. Then dead Bosche, 
destroyed shelters, and machine gun emplacements, a torn 
forest, offered their mute and terrible praise. 

The second day the infantry made two kilometers. 
After that it slowed down for a time, so that by lengthen- 
ing the range the entire regiment remained in these em- 
placements until the 30th. 

On that morning the First Battalion decided to get 
farther forward. Major Easterday left at 7 o'clock to 



270 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

reconnoiter for new positions. Captain Reed was to 
follow with the battalion at 10 to a point near the Abri 
de Crochet. The infantry had captured this important 
and pleasant place a day or two before. On the map it 
appeared as a crossroads. It was, one estimated, scarcely 
1000 meters from the front line. 

That distance, it was expected, would soon be decidedly 
widened. It was to some extent, but for a time now the 
progress of our infantry, was reduced to nearly nothing. 
There were a number of reasons. The effect of the first 
rush was over. The men were tired. Every battalion 
had had serious losses. While the Germans gathered 
themselves for a stand, several divisions — probably 
nearly 200,000 men were rushed to their support. In 
addition to these fresh odds, the country had become 
if anything more difficult than at first. Then before the 
advance could get fairly started once more the affair of 
the Lost Battalion helped hold things up. But on this 
day of Major Easterday's reconnaissance the advance 
continued, if slowly. 

The battalion halted short of the crossroads while 
Captains Reed, Dana, and Ravenel, and Lieutenant Kane 
rode forward to find the major. When, after some time, 
they joined him, he said he had chosen positions a kilo- 
meter and a half to the rear. Coming up the battery com- 
manders had seen these positions, and they were by no 
means enthusiastic. Major Easterday as usual was ready 
to weigh the opinions of his battery commanders. Cap- 
tain Reed meantime had pushed through a fringe of trees 
and had seen positions on a slope to the right which he 
believed had possibilities, if a small amount of cutting 
should be done. Major Easterday approved and with 
the battery commanders studied the ground more closely, 
locating positions in which no cutting at all was necessary, 
in the altogether delightful Abri de Crochet. . 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 271 

Delightful is really the word, for here, in a sort of arapi- 
theater, the Bosche during four years had developed the 
rarest refinements of position warfare life. The place 
possessed enormous and intricate dugouts, some of them 
boring into the rock for nearly a hundred feet. They 
were furnished. Food, even, had been left, ready to cook, 
by the hurried Germans. Chlorinated water was forgotten 
for a time, for the dugouts were well stocked with mineral 
water, and some stronger liquids. Shower baths invited. 
Fire wood was cut and piled. Tramways ran here and 
there for convenience in bringing up supplies. 

The network extended so far that battery command 
posts fared as well as battalion. 

The Battery A commander had an experience the 
first day that illustrates as well as anything else the elab- 
orate scheme of the system. The B commander and he 
had their eyes on the same dugout. Captain Ravenel 
got to it first. Captain Dana chose another some dis- 
tance away. Everyone had long since learned to examine 
such places for traps. Captain Dana and Lieutenant 
Stribling went in at once, therefore, with flash lamps, and 
searched through the galleries. They came to a door. 
They halted. For something with a slow stealth moved 
beyond the panels. 

In whispers the two officers discussed the situation. 
A German spy might have been left behind to wait in this 
comparatively safe retreat until he could slip through the 
lines with a plan of the American artillery dispositions. 
There was only one thing to do. The door had to be 
opened. 

The two loosened the pistols in their holsters. Cap- 
tain Dana raised the lamp. He flung the door wide with 
a sudden gesture, prepared for emergencies. Across the 
threshold stood, in much the same attitude, with much 
the same suspicions, Captain Ravenel. 



XXI 

ALWAYS THROUGH THE FOREST 

The First Battalion remained at the Abri de Crochet 
for a week, while the Second stayed in the position at La 
Harazee, both supporting, after October 2nd, the famous 
Lost Battalion, The ring of fire with which the 305th 
circled Major Whittlesey's command was credited with a 
measurable share in his salvation. The Second Battalion, 
moreover, had an oflScer with him during those black 
days. Lieutenant Teichmoeller, of Battery D, had been 
in liaison with Major Whittlesey when the jaws had closed. 

The story of the Lost Battalion has been told often 
enough. A word here will suffice to explain the artillery's 
perpetual support of the trapped men. 

On October 2nd the infantry was forging ahead, scarcely 
able to maintain flank and rear liaison because of the 
broken and overgrown terrain. Suddenly the enemy ap- 
peared on both flanks and to the rear of the First Battalion 
and Companies E and H of the Second Battalion of the 
308th Infantry. This party of, perhaps, 600 men and 
officers had made a quick forward thrust of half a kilo- 
meter or so. It became clear now that neighboring units 
had failed to keep pace. Major Whittlesey's party, 
therefore, was in a trap from which the Huns were evi- 
dently determined it should never escape. For six days 
they pounded the little command while the Americans 
did everything possible to relieve it. For six days it 
went almost entirely without food. Aeroplanes were 
sent over to drop rations and ammunition, but in the thick 

272 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 273 




Drawn hy Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co. 
Langon and Grand Ham 



woods had difl&culty locating the suffering group. For six 
days its personnel accomplished Homeric deed, endeavor- 
ing to guide the aeroplanes and to get messengers through. 
Its losses were great. Of those who came back after the 
relief few were un wounded. Lieutenant Teichmoeller, 
while completely exhausted and ill from lack of food, was 
one of the fortunate ones who had not been hit. 

During this period the strain was felt almost as thor- 
oughly by the artillery as by the supporting infantry. 
Our batteries fired constantly. Our agents and obser- 



274 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

vers forward did what they could to locate the command 
and to report on the result of the fire. 

On the second day — that is October 3rd — Lieutenants 
Burden and Klots with Private Cox, of the Headquarters 
Company, were forward with the infantry, trying to get 
some light on the situation. 

They were crossing an open space when they spied an 
observation tower in the woods ahead. 

"It's an observatory," Lieutenant Klots said, "and if 
there's anybody in it he'll snipe at us." 

Someone was in it, and he began sniping with a 77^ 
The party took shelter in a crater. 

After a time, when the sniping had ceased, the three 
made a dash for some trees on the flank. They reached 
the shelter, but the grove itself was getting a good many 
shells. Lieutenant Klots pointed out a low bank. 

"Looks like dead space under that bank," he said. 
"Why not wait there and have a smoke .f*" 

The others agreed. But the bank did not furnish dead 
space for a man. A number of shells fell nearby. Then 
one dropped directly in front of the party, and the back 
lash got all three. Lieutenant Burden was badly hurt in 
the thigh. Private Cox got a painful and disabling wound 
in the leg. Lieutenant Klots was struck by a fragment on 
the instep. 

Other shells would come. There was only one thing to 
do — make a run for it. 

Lieutenant Burden started first and reached the thicker 
woods out of the line of fire. Cox tried it, but went down 
after a step or two, realizing for the first time that his 
leg had been fractured. Lieutenant Klots carried him 
back to such shelter as the bank afforded and remained 
with him until some infantrymen came along with a 
stretcher and took him to the first aid station. Cox did 
not return to the regiment. Lieutenant Burden had had 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 275 




Drawn by Corporal Schmidt, Hg. Co. 
Grand-Pre 



a narrow escape and 
was not discharged 
from the hospital un- 
til some time after 
the armistice, when 
he was assigned to 
work in Paris in 
connection with the 
peace parleys. Lieu- 
tenant BUots' wound 
was slight, and he 
returned to duty 
within a few days. 

On October 4th, while firing in support of the Lost Bat- 
talion, C Battery lost a man in a premature burst. A 
piece of the tube struck Private Edgar A. Blethen. Lieu- 
tenant Robinson was the first to reach him, but the man 
had been instantly killed. 

With the relief of the Lost Battalion the infantry re- 
sumed its advance, and it became clear that the artillery 
would be better off in new positions. Regimental Head- 
quarters had left La Harazee on September 27th for Ferme 
aux Charmes. On October 9th it went forward two kilo- 
meters to the Depot de Machines. The First Battalion 
moved considerably further into the Bois de la Naza, but 
•remained here only a few hours. After taking position it 
found that the infantry had gone so far ahead it would 
not be profitable to fire. It continued, then, to a point 
a kilometer west of Chatel-Cheherry where it remained 
for one day, firing semi-steel shells on German works near 
Grand Pre. 

The Second Battalion on October 8th left La Harazee 
for the Stolzenfels dugout system in the rear of Binar- 
ville, 200 meters to the left of the Binarville-Chateau 
Vienne road. The battalion did not fire from these posi- 



276 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

tions. It left them on October 9th for positions further 
forward, about half a kilometer to the right of the village 
of Langon. 

The entire regiment on October 10th moved forward 
through the Bois de Langon to the vicinity of Grand Ham. 
Regimental Headquarters was established at Malassise 
Farm on the Aisne. The First Battalion took up posi- 
tions to the east of Grand Ham, while the Second went a 
trifle further to the north to Hill 208. In these positions 
the regiment remained, by shifting its ranges, always 
within reach of its targets until the 77th Division was 
relieved on October 17th. 

The regiment had a real mystery on October 10th, and 
it was not a pleasant one. Sergeant Orville C. Cooper, 
of Battery B was the victim. He had served as First 
Sergeant of the battery since the early days in Upton, and 
had been much appreciated by Captain Ravenel. On the 
night of the 10th, according to the report made by the 
battery clerk. Sergeant Cooper was called from his quar- 
ters at the battery echelon near La Chalade by a soldier 
unknown to anyone in the battery. The soldier said that 
the sergeant was wanted by Captain McKenna at the 
Supply dump, about 500 meters away. Sergeant Cooper 
took a short cut. About half an hour later he was brought 
back to the echelon by an infantry guard detachment. 
He had been badly slashed in the throat and about the 
body, evidently by barbed wire in falling from a narrow 
foot bridge after his assailants had beaten him on the head 
with a club. He was in a semi-conscious condition, and 
was evacuated by Major Miller. Captain McKenna 
had not sent for the Sergeant, and a searching examination 
of property, and a careful questioning of the personnel in 
the vicinity of the echelon failed to yield the slightest clue 
to the assault. Sergeant Cooper was so badly hurt that he 
was invalided to America. 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 277 

On the next day Battery D had an unusual casualty. 
Private Rodney J. Lecours, who had been guarding am- 
munition, lay down in hay on the side of a road near 
Binarville and fell asleep. His head was towards the 
road. Other men were asleep nearby. A motor truck, 
not seeing these men in the dark, drew up at the side of the 
road. One of the wheels passed over Private Lecours, 
killing him instantly. 

It was during this last stage of the operations that had 
commenced on September 26th that the regiment suffered 
a depressing loss. First Lieutenant Sheldon E. Hoadley 
was killed on Sunday, October 13th. He had left his bat- 
tery position and was riding along a road to the rear when 
a shell burst near him. A fragment struck him. He 
received immediate attention, but there was no chance. 
He died a few minutes after he was hit, while on his way 
to a dressing station in an ambulance. 




The dugout near 
which Lieutenant 
Hoadley was killed 



Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D 



278 HISTOEY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth, Battery D 
Forging forward 

Rumors of a relief became persistent. Horses and men 
were worn out. Since entering the war in Lorraine the 
regiment had left the front only to change position. In 
other words it had had no rest at all. The supply of 
ammunition was uncertain. The materiel needed atten- 
tion. Grand Pre and St. Juvin, divisional objectives had 
been taken. 

Rumors crystallized into fact. The 78th Division re- 
lieved the 77th on October 17th and 18th. Regimental 
Headquarters moved back to La Chalade, resting for a 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 279 

few hours at Langon. The batteries followed out. Baths, 
delousing, and rest waited at La Chalade. 

There was, it developed, to be more than simple rest. 
The regiment was allowed a number of passes for three 
days, exclusive of travel. The fortunate departed gaily 
for the vicinity of Paris or the Riviera. In many cases, 
it will be sadly remembered, they were met as they des- 
cended from the trains at their destinations by military 
policemen who presented them with telegrams. These 
missives recalled them at once to the regiment. The 
reason was obvious. The division was returning at once 
to its place in the line. There would be a new and vig- 
orous offensive. 



XXII 
THE LAST PHASE 

The clans gathered again at La Chalade, and made 
ready to hurry back to the Hne. During the period of 
rest everyone had found time to read the papers. It 
was known that the Germans had asked for peace; that 
notes had passed back and forth; but at the front no one 
took the news very seriously. There was too much to be 
done. The men had become so absorbed by the war that 
at last they had borrowed something of the French attitude. 
The thing appeared eternal. 

The question of transportation caused worry and 
wonderment. The regiment had received replacements 
of men, but none of horses. How was it going to be pos- 
sible to move guns and ammunition with the few animals 
left? The answer came a little later in an unexpected 
form. 

On October 27th the echelon was established at Chatel- 
Cheherry, and Regimental Headquarters and First Bat- 
talion Headquarters settled themselves in a house at 
Cornay. The First Battalion guns were a kilometer to 
the north. 

The Second Battalion guns were in the same valley 
as the First, but to the left, near the town of Marc. Major 
Easterday and Captain Starbuck made a careful recon- 
naissance of the front. Firing opened on November 1st. 

Again the advance was large, and on November 2nd 
the regiment moved forward to the vicinity of Verpel. 

First Class Private Abel S. Virkler, of Battery C was 

280 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 281 

hit by a fragment on November 2nd and killed while at 
work at his battery position. 

At midnight of that day the transportation problem 
was solved in a radical fashion. The orders for the move 
had evidently come from high up. Colonel Doyle sum- 
moned Majors Easterday and Wanvig to ChampigneuUes. 

There the colonel told the two majors that the regiment 
would be split. The First Battalion would continue as a 
combat battalion. The Second would act as its combat 
train. It would turn over to the First, horses, wire, 
telephones, and other equipment. 

Such a move was inevitable. More than once in heavy 
weather the horses had been unable to draw the pieces 
without the aid of cannoneers. The weather could be 
counted on now for much rain and the consequent mud. 

The battery commanders, in pursuance to this order, 
met Major Easterday in Verpel, and the dispositions were 
settled upon. The echelon was established there. Cap- 
tain Derby, who had recently been promoted with Captain 
Pike, was placed in charge. Captain Storer was given com- 
mand of the combat train and instructed to keep always 
in the train 2000 rounds. Major Wanvig and his staff, 
of course, were responsible for both the echelon and the 
train. 

Under these new conditions the regiment moved for- 
ward towards the Meuse. On November 3rd the firing 
batteries passed through Buzancy. The town had been 
fired by the Germans and was in flames. Civilians, who 
had been under the German yoke for four years, hurried 
to the rear with what belongings they could save. They 
were clearly grateful to see the Americans, but such emo- 
tion as theirs does not express itself demonstratively. 

That night and the next morning pirate guns were sent 
out. Lieutenant Robinson took one. Lieutenant Mitchell, 
another, and Lieutenant Warren W. Nissley, a third. 



282 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




Drawn by Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co. 
Binai'ville and its surroundings 

These officers with a piece each, and a cart full of ammu- 
nition, went forward to the infantry, and fired on whatever 
targets the infantry commander chose. It was dangerous 
work. Our officers went into position, practically in the 
open, and fired at German machine gun nests, and re- 
ceived from the infantry a gratifying amount of praise. 

On the evening of the 3rd the First Battalion moved 
forward to Fontenoy. Regimental Headquarters also 
located its command post in the village. First Class 
Private William Kuttler, one of the regimental messengers, 
was killed on the road near Fontenoy that day. He was 
walking behind an escort wagon and was close to a party 
of infantry when a shell burst in the bank at the side of the 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 283 

road. Kuttler was the only man of our regiment hit, but 
seven infantrymen were killed and a number wounded. 

On the same day Lieutenant Charles Graham was 
wounded by a shell fragment and evacuated. 

The regiment remained in Fontenoy the 3rd and 4th, 
then moved into Stone, placing the three firing batteries 
in position in the valley to the south-west. 

The civilian population in Stone welcomed the Ameri- 
cans as saviours. Men and women said the Germans 
before fleeing, had instructed them to take refuge in the 
church, promising not to shell the town for 24 hours. 
Scarcely, however, had they gone than the place was 
drenched with gas shells, and, of course, the civilians had 
no gas masks. 

The next day another forward move was made to Flaba. 
Rations were scarce. Often the men had given of their 
issue to the civilians. Here the civilians gave the soldiers 
black German bread which the hungry men had not ex- 
perienced before. The result was a sad amount of indi- 
gestion and a heightened sympathy for those who had been 
compelled to live for so long under the Hun food regula- 
tions. 

There was no firing from these positions, and on Nov- 
ember 6th Batteries A, B, and C, moved a half a kilo- 
meter to the east of Harraucourt, into range of the heights 
across the Meuse. The Second Battalion, acting as com- 
bat train, had kept pace with all these changes and had 
assured the supply of ammunition. Here the regiment 
remained until the signing of the armistice, five days later. 

On the day the pieces moved into the final positions the 
regiment had its last casualty in action. Second Lieut- 
enant Leon H. Hattemer, who had come to the 305 th on 
the Vesle, was killed by a machine gun bullet, while in 
liaison with the infantry. The nearness of the end made 
his death seem all the more unfortunate. 



284 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 




Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth 
Refugees going out, the artillery going in 



Lieutenants Burden and Bullen, and Private Gormley 
were mentioned in division orders for their work during 
the Argonne fighting. 

A few new officers were assigned during this last offen- 
sive. Second Lieutenant Angus R. Allmond had come 
on October 10th. Three other officers were with the regi- 
ment for a few weeks but were transferred away again to 
other branches of the service. On November 10th, the 
day before the armistice. Major Edwin A. Zundel was 
assigned to the command of the First Battahon to replace 
Major Easterday, whose promotion to a Lieutenant- 
colonelcy had just come through. Colonel Easterday had 
commanded the battalion from Nesles Woods to the Meuse 
Heights, that is during its most active combat experience. 
For his aggressiveness, and his daring in reconnaissance 
he was cited afterwards in division orders. He was a 
familiar figure near the front lines on foot, on his horse, 
or dashing about in a motorcycle. Once he and his 
driver wandered past the pickets and into a village filled 
with German soldiers, preparing to depart. Easterday 
told the driver to turn around, and before the Huns had 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 285 

recovered from their astonishment, he was rushing back 
to his command. By virtue of his new rank he went to 
Regimental Headquarters as second in command. 

With Major Zundel came Second Lieutenants Solomon 
Abelow and Horace Heyday. The next day the war was 
over. 

The fact of the armistice had been announced during 
the morning, but the regiment was skeptical, and went 
about its business. When the firing stopped the men at- 
tended to their routine duties and grinned wisely when- 
ever anyone tried to tell them the show was at an end. 
The silence at last made an impression, and, as a band 
appeared, victoriously playing at the head of a regiment 
of Moroccans, the majority conceded that there might be 
something in the rumor. 

There were, however, cases of chronic doubt. Sergeant 
Joseph, of the band, for example, had been left some dis- 
tance in the rear to guard a reel cart. He picked up what 
he could to eat from neighboring units, but on the whole, 
was a hungry sentry. On November 14th a doughboy 
passed him in his isolated retreat, came up, and burst into 
a laugh. 

"Hay, Buddy! What you wearing your gas mask in 
the alert for?" 

"Orders," from the sergeant. 

A guffaw from the visitor. 

"The war's been over three days." 

"I've heard that before," replied the sergeant drily. 

Somehow this fellow managed to persuade him. 

The minute the great fact was absorbed the talk was of 
home. The original word was that the 77th would go into 
the Army of Occupation. That was altered and, except 
for a few officers and men, who were transferred to units 
ordered up, the division moved out of the line. 



286 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 



The 305th was billeted in Verpel for a time, and the 
period of leaves commenced. After one or two stops by 
the way the regiment detrained at Latrecy and marched 
to Arc-en-Barrois, a charming and hospitable village in the 
Haute Marne, where it remained in the midst of rumors 
of departure until February 9th. 

Here an elaborate schedule of training went into effect, 
based on ancient methods of firing, so that some had a 
good time talking wisely and extensively about aiming 
points, designation of targets, and P minus T. Also 
scandals of ammunition and equipment were laid bare at 
leisure. And everybody was brought into close personal 
touch with the High Cost of Living. 

But there was a difference. OjQBcers and men followed 
out the appointed schedules, but their spirits were at home. 
There was no desperate and necessary future to which 
_j this training led. It had the air of 

killing time and keeping men occupied. 
And many soldiers wanted to learn 
things that would be useful to them 
on their return to America and work. 
The days slipped away beneath 
heavy skies, and a down- 
pour nearly perpetual. 
Athletics got a start 
with soccer football on 
New Year's Day. 

In the midst of ru- 
mors of our early de- 
parture came the epi- 
demic of Spanish 
influenza. We had had 
a number of cases, and 

Drawn by Private Enroth. Battery D SOmC deaths. LicuteU- 

The Church at Arc-en-Barrois ant Danforth Montague 




HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 287 

had gone in December, and there was an uncomfortable 
feehng that the dread disease was always with us. The 
latter part of January men commenced to report sick by 
the score. One day thirty would be evacuated. Another 
we would say good-by to forty. The evacuations worked 
up to fifty or more, and we knew each day that some of the 
men that climbed, feverish and ill, into the ambulance, 
would not come back. 

In this emergency. Major Miller worked day and night. 
Sporadic cases of typhoid complicated his labor. His suc- 
cess, however, permitted the regiment to leave for the 
embarkation center on February 9th. 

The bitter cold, the snow covering the ground, the pros- 
pect of cattle cars, didn't effect the joy the men took in 
this move towards home. 

The train was composed of ancient cars. It crawled. 
A journey that one might take in a regular train in eight 
or nine hours consumed for us, cramped, cold, and uncom- 
fortable, about sixty hours. We recalled the days before 
the armistice when we had been of more value to people 
generally; when we had been rushed long distances into 
action at express rate speed. 

And that trip will be eternally colored in our minds by 
Lieutenant Arthur Robinson's death. After accepting 
all the chances of the front with a cheerful and inspiring 
indifference which had won for him the Distinguished 
Service Cross, Robinson was accidentally killed on the 
night of February 10th at the little station of Chatillon- 
sur-Cher. He had stepped from our train which was 
standing on a siding. The fastest train on the road — an 
American special — tore by at a terrific rate of speed strik- 
ing the open door of a compartment. Robinson was struck 
by this door. He was buried with full military honors in 
the American cemetery at Angers. 

It was not like a death in action. Everyone, officers 



288 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

and men, had hked and admired Robmson. His death 
cast a persistent shadow over the regiment. 

During the evening of February 11th the 305th entered 
Mahcorne, a pottery town on the beautiful Sarthe River. 
The people were rather different from those at Arc, but 
after a time they learned to like the Americans. There 
we stayed until the 17th of April, drilling, getting reviewed 
and inspected, and chasing the elusive cootie, so that we 
should be rushed through Brest. The weather was suffi- 
ciently warm to permit us to develop a baseball team that 
closed an extended divisional season undefeated. 

When we reached Pontanezin on the 18th we realized 
that we were, indeed, veterans, that we had really been 
pioneers in the A. E. F. For Pontanezin had grown out 
of all recognition since our visit of the year before. Then 
it had been nearly as the French had turned it over — a 
group of old barracks and a few tents. Now it covered 
many acres. The original camp was lost in the midst of 
countless huts and tents. Whatever horrors the place 
may have contained we failed to experience. We were 
there only two days, and the weather was clear and warm. 
On Sunday, April 20th, we marched into Brest, survived 
the mad confusion of loading baggage and men from pier 
to tender, and from tender to ship, and by nightfall were 
packed on the transport Agamemnon, the old German 
liner Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. 

We sailed at noon of the 21st out of the harbor of Brest, 
"a good deal wiser," as one man put it, "than when we 
had landed." 

The boat was uncomfortably crowded, but no one cared. 
We were going home. The weather, moreover, was good, so 
that scarcely anyone was ill, and the Agamemnon was fast. 

At 9 o'clock Tuesday morning, April 29th we saw the 
low shore of Long Island and picked up our pilot at Am- 
brose Channel Lightship. 







■.•wnK*"^ 



Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D. 
MalJcorne from the Sarthe 



HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 289 

The story of that day of homecoming is in everyone's 
heart — a trifle vague still, perhaps, because it was difficult 
to realize that we were, after more than a year, again in 
New York Harbor; that, where twelve months before we 
had slipped out, hidden between decks, we were now 
steaming noisily in, surrounded by cutters and ferryboats, 
decorated with banners and filled with shouting friends. 

Everything, indeed, was reversed. But on the pier 
there were still men and women who gave us things to eat 
and smoke. We piled on to the same ferryboats, and went 
around the welcoming town to Long Island City. 

That night we reached Camp Mills, and the next morn- 
ing, after a final delousing, half the regiment went home 
for forty-eight hours, the other fifty per-cent. following 
two days later. 

Even then you had a feeling that you were through. 
You could count already the hours that separated you 
from a return to a normal life, a final rupture from the ser- 
vice to which everyone had given himself whole-heartedly, 
but with which nearly everybody wanted to be done now 
that the emergency was over. 

The parade alone held us. We went to New York Mon- 
day morning for that, left our equipment in the 9th Regi- 
ment armory, spent Monday and Tuesday night home, 
and on Tuesday morning marched up Fifth Avenue from 
Washington Square to 110th Street, where we saw the 
last of our Division and Brigade commanders. 

The return to Upton the next day was the commence- 
ment of the final phase. There, where the regiment had 
been born, it was to end its career. Upton had altered 
little, yet it seemed oddly different. That was because 
it was ourselves who had changed. 

At Upton the machinery of demobilization seemed to be 
out of repair by day and to grind only during the dark 
hours. After three nearly sleepless nights the last for- 



290 HISTORY OF 305th FIELD ARTILLERY 

malities had been compHed with, and organizations gath- 
ered in a pouring rain for their final pay and their raihoad 
tickets home. Men glanced proudly at the red chevrons 
on their left arms signifying discharge. They walked, in 
formation for the last time, to the familiar railroad station 
where organization commanders and officers gave them 
their discharges and shook hands as they passed through 
the gates — civilians after one of the best jobs soldiers ever 
did. And with this breaking up of the 305th Field Artil- 
lery died a good deal that was fine, a good deal that you 
couldn't see vanish without regret. Yet, although it may 
seem paradoxical, few would care to watch its completest 
resurrection, because that would mean also the rebirth of 
the conditions on which it was built. 

No more that great communal chorus "When do we 
eat?" 

No more the revolt in one's heart at the best cursed 
music in the world. First Call ! 

No more tearing one's hair at Paper Work! 

No more elaborate language or strong arm competitions 
with the Red Hats ! 

Even the first sergeant got a sympathetic thought that 
last morning. 

His piercing whistle at reveille had a special significance. 

And so did his loud, uncompromising, and final : 

"Outside!" 



THE END 



APPENDIX 



ROLL OF HONOR 



KILLED IN ACTION 



Graham, Edward F. 


2Lt. 




Hq. Co. Aug. 22 


Cave near Cemenocal 


Hattemeb, Leon H. 


2Lt. 




BtryE Nov. 5 


1 km. W. of Oches 


HoADLEY, Sheldon 


iLt. 




Btry D Oct. 13 


Argonne 


Strong, Ellsworth 0. 


2Lt. 




BtryA Aug. 25 


Ville Savoy 


Aasgard, Almeb M. 


Pvt. 




Hq. Co. Sept. 15 


Blanzy 


Blethen, Edgar A. 


Pvt. 




Btry C Oct. 4 


Abri de Crochet 


Fnxici, FioRi 


Wag. 




Sup. Co. Sept. 11 


Road near Chery 


Fisher, Wat.lace 


Pvt. 




Hq. Co. Sept. 3 


Fismes 


FoRMAN, George L., Jb. 


Pvt. 




Btry A Aug. 20 


1.5 km. ESE Chery 


Geer, Connie F. 


Corp. 




Btry D Aug. 16 


7 km. N. Foret de Nesles 


IsLEB, Fred 


Pvt. 




Hq. Co. Aug. 26 


Chery 


Jackson, Jackob E. 


Wag. 




Sup. Co. Sept. 11 


Woods near Chery 


Kbonfield, Harry E. 


Pvt. 




Btry B Aug. 16 


7 km. N. Foret de Nesles 


KuTTLER, William 


Pvt. 


Icl. 


Hq. Co. Nov. 4 


Harroucourt 


Lucking, Geohge J. 


Pvt. 




Btry B Aug. 20 


3 km. ENE Chery 


Point, George E. 


Sgt. 




Hq. Co. Aug. 20 


Les Pres Farm 


Rosalia, Charles C. 


Pvt. 




Btry E Aug. 28 


Chery Y. M. C. A. 


RnBiNO, Walter J. 


Pvt. 




Btry D Aug. 21 


5 km. S. E. Chery 


SiLBBB, Mabtin W. 


Pvt. 


Icl. 


Hq. Co. Aug. 16 


Bois de Coehelet 


Tiffany, Fbank L. 


Pvt. 




Hq. Co. Aug. 28 


Vesle 


Vibklee, Abel S. 


Pvt. 


Icl. 


Btry C Nov. 2 


Argorme 


Webber, Frederick J. 


Pvt. 


Icl. 


Btry E Aug. 25 


5 km. S E Chery 


Whetstone, John W. 


Pvt. 




Btry B Aug. 16 


7 km. N Foret de Nesles 






accidentally killed 




Robinson, Arthur A. 


2Lt. 




Sup. Co. Feb. 10 


Chatillon-sur-Cher 


Lecours, Rodney J. 


Pvt. 


Icl. 


Btry D Oct. 11 


Binarville 


Lynch, Jeremiah S 


Pvt. 




Btry B June 20 


Camp de Souge 


Posner, Harey J. 


Pvt. 




BtryB June 28 


Camp de Souge 



DIED OF DISEASE* 

compiled from report of daily changes 



Montague, Danforth 1st Lt. 
Bbule, Herbert J. Pvt. 



Died of Disease Nov. 5, 1918 

Btry D " " " Nov. 1, 1918 

Evacuation Hosp. No. 9 
1st Army 
CoBP. William F. Mee. Btry D Died of Disease 

Reported on Feb. 4, 1919. No date given. 

*Because of lack of reports, following some evacuations, this list should not be con- 
sidered complete. 

I 293 



294 



APPENDIX 



Klink, Joseph 
Whalen, David J. 
Labson, F. C. 
Ford, George 
TuBNEK, Elmeb 
Btiess, Edward G. 
Burns, James J. 
Engelkes, Hildeet 
Hodge, Henry W. 
Pearson, Nils G. 
Rtan, Ernest A. 
SiEGEL, Henry 
Smith, George N. 
Steen, Pebey 
YoNNE, Arthur 
Gittelman, Jake 



Died of Disease 



Pvt. Btry F 

Pvt. 1 cl. Btry D " " 

Pvt. 1 cl. " Btry C Died Pneumonia 

Sgt. Btry B Died Disease 

Pvt. 1 cl. Btry F 

Pvt. Btry E 

Pvt. Btry D. 

Pvt. Btry F 

Pvt. Btry E 

Pvt. 1 cl. Btry E 

Pvt. Btry E 

Corp. Btry F 

Pvt. 1 cl. Btry F 

Pvt. 1 cl. Btry B 

Pvt. Btry F 

Pvt. Btry C 



Feb. 4, 1919 
Feb. 4, 1919 
Feb. 7, 1919 
Feb. 7, 1919 
Feb. 8, 1919 
Broncho-Pneumonia Feb. 8, 1919 
Feb. 10, 1919 
Feb. 10, 1919 
Feb. 10, 1919 
Feb. 11, 1919 
Feb. 8, 1919 
Feb. 12, 1919 
Feb. 11, 1919 
Feb. 8, 1919 
Feb. 13, 1919 
Feb. 27. 1919 



LIST OF OFFICERS AND MEN, 305TH F. A., WOUNDED AND GASSED 
1918 



July 23 


Miles, Howard G. 


Corp. 


Battery C 


Aug. 16 


Tredendall, Douglas L. 


Pvt. 


Battery B 


" 16 


Horowitz, Joseph 


Pvt. 


Det. M. C. 


" 16 


Rothman, Morris 


Pvt. 


Btry. E 


" 16 


Thomas, George A. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryB 


" 19 


Delanoy, Douglas 


Capt. 


BtryF 


" 19 


Graham, Edward F. 


2nd Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


" 19 


Meiebdircks, Carl H. 


Pvt. 


Btry C 


" 19 


McKenna, Barth 


Sgt. 


Btry F 


" 19 


Tropp, Ralph 


Pvt. 


Det. M. C 


" 20 


Applegatb, George H. 


Bn.Sgt.M 


■. Hq. Co. 


" 20 


Pbeda, Fred 


Cook 


Btry A 


" 20 


Scheunbb, Feed 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryB 


" 21 


Cohen, Joseph 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Btry D 


" 21 


Metzger, Jacob 


Sgt. 


Btry D 


" 21 


Roos, Arthur H. 


Corp. 


Btry D 


" 22 


Klots, Allen T. 


1st Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


" 23 


CoLBURN, Edward 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryC 


" 24 


Buchbinder, Marc 


Sgt. 


Btry A 


" 24 


Cahill, John J. 


Pvt. 


BtryB 


" 24 


Lewis, Reese H. 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


" 25 


Bhiggs, Lester E. 


Pvt. 


Btry E 


" 25 


Connors, Francis J. 


Sgt. 


Btry D 


" 25 


Forsyth, James R. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Btry E 


" 25 


Golden, Charles I. 


Corp. 


Btry A 


" 25 


Golden, Daniel W. 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


" 25 


KiLCOYNE, George F. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryE 


" 25 


Meyer, John R. 


Corp. 


BtryE 


" 25 


Nestor, Aloysius P. 


Pvt. 


Btry A 


" 26 


Miller, Wendell P. 


Sgt. 


BtryC 


" 26 


Newell, Albert H. 


Pvt. 


BtryE 


" 26 


RoMEB, William F. 


Pvt. 


Btry A 


" 27 


Silver, Leon 


Cook 


BtryC 



APPENDIX 295 

Aug. 28 



Sept. 



Oct. 



28 


Hanson, Rasmos 


Pvt. 


BtryE 


28 


Landsman, Alexandeb 


Corp. 


Btry D 


28 


MoNETTE, Dona J. 


Pvt. 


BtryE 


31 


Gatpney, William 


Pvt. 


BtryC 


7 


Bean, Walter 


Pvt. 


BtryB 


7 


Berman, Abraham 


Pvt. 


Btry D 


7 


Bisso, Frank R. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Braumbach, William 


Wag. 


Sup. Co. 


7 


Brennan, Michael J. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryC 


7 


Bromm, Fred H. 


Sgt. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Carson, John N. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryF 


7 


CoNLET, Joseph C. 


Pvt. 


BtryE 


7 


Connelly, James W. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Btry D 


7 


Doyle, Fred C. 


Col. 


F. &S. 


7 


Gammell, Arthur A. 


Capt. 


F. &S. 


7 


Gillette, George 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Hoffman, George A. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Klots, Allen T. 


1st Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Kurash, Irving 


Mus. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Mamltjck, Mark E. 


Sgt. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Martin, John G. 


Sgt. 


BtryB 


7 


McSwiGGAN, Francis 


Pvt. 


Sup. Co. 


7 


Miller, Lawrence M. 


RegSgtMj Hq. Co. 


7 


Mitchell, C. vonE. 


Capt. 


F. & S. 


7 


Palmer, Theodore 


Mus. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Pullen, Edwin L. 


Bugler 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Solomon, Harry 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Wallach, Max 


Mus. 


Hq. Co. 


7 


Wanner, Henry 


Pvt. 


BtryC 


7 


Visco, Arthur 


Cook 


Sup. Co. 


8 


Frankel, Philip 


Corp. 


Hq. Co. 


8 


GoLDPiNGER, Benjamin D. 


Pvt. 


Sup. Co. 


11 


Margero, Charles 


Pvt. 


Btry A 


15 


Cook, Leonard L. 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


15 


McGranaghan, Edmund B. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Hq. Co. 


16 


Montgomery, Carlos 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


3 


Burden, Chester G. 


1st Lt. 


Btry B. 


3 


Klots, Allen T. 


1st Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


4 


CosENTiNO, Frank R. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Btry C 


4 


Decker, Philip 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryC 


4 


Evans, Harry B. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


. BtryC 


4 


Mendonsa, Manuel C. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


BtryC 


5 


Cox, Cyril S. 


Pvt. 


Hq. Co. 


5 


Feldman, David 


Sup. Sgt. 


BtryC 


5 


Streed, Fred A. 


Pvt. 


BtryB 


8 


Sadler, Thos. G., Jr. 


Pvt. 


Btry D 


10 


Nolan, Benjamin 


Pvt. 1 cl, 


, BtryC 


12 


Staley, Owen T. 


Pvt. 1 cl. 


Btry E 


13 


Gerstner, Harold S. 


Corp. 


Btry A 


13 


GooLEY, John A. 


Corp. 


Hq. Co. 


14 


Bullen, Osbon W. 


2nd Lt. 


Btry A 


14 


Gormly, Martin A. 


Pvt. 


BtryF 



296 



APPENDIX 



Oct. 14 
14 
15 
16 
17 
17 
17 
17 
17 
18 
18 
1 



Nov, 



SCHWEITZEB, FbAME J. 

Whitman, Francis W. 
Stathes, Nicholas 
D'Andbea, Michaeb 
Englander, David 
Garros, George 

GiTTLEMAN, JaKE 

Saucier, Joseph L. 
Stabile, Dominicr 
Larson, Harold G. 
Thompson, Roy 
Cbonin, Denis J. 
Bloomtield, Edwin J. 
Himmel, Benjamin 
Wing, Leung 
Graham, Charles L. 
Hanlet, John J. 
Johnston, Andrew G. 
Hates, Hugh P. 
Peabn, Robert 



Corp. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 1 cl. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

1st Lt. 

Corp. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

2nd Lt. 

Pvt. 1 cl 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 

Pvt. 1 cl. 



Hq. Co, 

BtryF 

Btry A 

BtryD 

BtryB 

BtryB 

BtryC 

BtryC 

BtryC 

Btry A 

Btry A 

Det. M. C. 

BtryC 

Btry A 

Btry A 

BtryC 

BtryC 

BtryC 

Hq. Co. 

BtryC 



DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSSES 



2nd Lt. Arthur A. Robinson. 



Corporal G. H. Johnson 



ATHLETICS 
By 2nd Lt. Osbon W. BuUen 

On the morning of January 1st, 1919, the D Battery 
Soccer Team played a team from the Brigade Headquar- 
ters. The game ended in a scoreless tie. This was the 
beginning of athletics in the 305th Field Artillery. From 
that day until we started for Brest, there was always some 
contest under way in the Regiment. The Athletic hour 
which was made a part of the drill schedule helped to 
stimulate interest and started many men training for con- 
tests, which came later. 

A Regimental Soccer League was organized and the first 
game played on January 6th, between Batteries B and E. 
Eight teams were entered in the league. The following 
summary shows the standing of the the teams on April 1st. 





WON 


LOST 


TIED 


PERCENTAGE 


Battery A 


3 


1 


1 


.750 


" B 


3 


1 


1 


.750 


" E 


3 


1 


1 


.750 


" C 


1 


2 


2 


.333 


" D 


1 


4 





.200 


Headquarters Co. 








2 


.000 


Supply Co. 








1 


.000 


Battery F 





1 





.000 



The best players from these eight clubs were selected 
and a Regimental team was formed. This was the first 
team to represent the Regiment in outside competition. 
On Feb. 2nd we met the 304th F. A. and defeated them by 

297 



298 APPENDIX 

a score of 3 to 1. From that time we played every avail- 
able team, winning five games, tieing two, and losing two. 
The team was selected to represent the Division at the 
Le Mans Area Meet. As we defeated every team in the 
Division we claimed the championship of the 77th Divi- 
sion. 

SOCCEB SCOBES 

Feb 2 305th F A. 3 

304 F. A. 1 
Feb. 15 305 F. A. 1 

306 F. A. 1 
Feb. 22 305 F. A. 1 

302 Ammunition Train 
Feb. 26 305 F. A. 

304 F. A. 
Feb. 29 305 F. A. 5 

304 F. A. 

Mar. 9 51st. Artillery Brigade 1 

305 F. A. 
Mar. 18 305 F. A. 4 

305 Infantry 
Mar. 22 305 F. A. 3 

307 Infantry 
Mar. 28 35th. Division 6 

305 F. A. 

On March 8th, a Brigade Track Meet was held at 
Mahcorne, France. Again the 305th was victorious. The 
final score being: 

305 F. A. 43 

302 Ammunition Train 32 

306 F. A. 29 
304 F. A. 22 

The men who won points for the 305th were : 

2nd. Lieut. McKee Pvt. Burns 

Pvt. Bitzelberger Sgt. Froedi 



APPENDIX 299 

Pvt. Gillegan Pvt. McLaughlin 

Cpl. Gooley Pvt. Monahan 

Cpl. Kressin Pvt. Wanner 

Teams representing the 305 F. A. won the following 
places. 

Tug of War — 1st place. Medley Relay — 2nd place. 

880 yard Relay — 2nd place. 

The Divisional Meet held on March 15th was won by 
the 152nd Field Artillery Brigade with a total of 55 points. 
Our nearest competitor was the 154th. Infantry Brigade 
with 45 points. The 305th F. A. won more points than 
any other unit in the Brigade. 

305 F. A. 20 302 Am. Tr. 16 

306 F. A. 16 304 F. A. 3 

In this meet our point winners were 

2nd. Lieut. McKee Cpl. Eo-essin 

Cpl. Dodge Pvt. McLaughlin 

Sgt. Froedi Pvt. Monahan 

Cpl. Gooley Sgt. Parrette 

Pvt. Wanner 

At the Le Mans Area Meet which was won by the 77th 
Division, the 305 F. A. was represented by the following 
men. 

Sgt. Alexander — 3rd place 120 yd. High Hurdles. 
Pvt. McLaughlin — 1st place Medley Relay Team 
Pvt. Monahan — 1st place 1 mile Relay Team 

The baseball season was opened on Feb. 22d by a game 
between the officers and enlisted men of the Regiment, 
which the enlisted men won 10 to 2. 

A Regimental League was formed, the first game being 
played on Feb. 25th. Ten teams entered. The standing 
at the conclusion of the series was: 



300 


APPENDIX 








WON 


LOST 


PEECENTAGE 


Supply Co. 


3 





.1000 


Battery A 


5 


1 


.833 


" C 


S 


1 


.750 


" B 


1 


2 


.333 


" D 


1 


2 


.333 


" E 


1 


2 


.333 


« F 





2 


.000 


Headquarters Co. 





1 


.000 


A. P. M. 





1 


.000 


Medical Det. 





1 


.000 



A Regimental Team was formed with Herman Ditzel of 
B Battery as Captain. The team played fifteen games, 
winning fourteen and losing one. The following games 
were played: 



305 F. A. 5 

304 F. A. 3 

305 F. A. 9 

304 F. A. 2 

305 F. A. 3 

306 F. A. 2 



305 F. A. 7 

304 F. A. 6 

305 F. A. 4 

51st Artillery Brigade 

305 F. A. 8 
103 F. A. 5 



The team was sent to Le Mans to represent the Division 
in the Area Meet. The Black Hawks of the Le Mans 
Classification Camp defeated our team in a seven inning 
game by a score of 2 to 0. 

A Divisional Baseball League was formed, opening 
games being played on April 1st. The 305th F. A. 
played and won eight games, finishing the series without 
a defeat. The last game with the Ammunition Train 
which the 305th won 4-3, decided the Division champion- 
ship as neither team had lost a game up to that time. 

The scores for the League games were: 



APPENDIX 301 

xlpril 1. 305 F. A. 6 

305 M. G. Bn. 2 
Apr. 2. 305 F. A. 15 

306 M. G. Bn. 7 
Apr. 3 305 F. A. 12 

302 F. S. Bn. 7 
Apr. 4. 305 F. A. 15 

302 Sau. Tr. 5 
Apr. 8. 305 F. A. 10 

308 Infantry 8 
Apr. 9. 305 F. A. 9 

304 F. A. 7 
Apr. 10. 305 F. A. 2 

306 F. A. 
Apr. 11. 305 F. A. 4 

302 Ammunition Train 3. 

The 305th Field Artillery were taking part in athletic 
activities from Jan. 1st to April 12th. In that time, our 
teams won the Brigade Track Meet, the Divisional Soccer 
Championship and Divisional Baseball Championship. 



WHERE WING WAS HURT 

By Sergeant Lynwood G. Downs 

Verpel, Nov. 2, 1918. 

The march was nearing its end. Wearily the battery 
splashed thru the muddy streets of Verpel, across the 
brook and up the hill. "Column Right "—" Halt " It 
was an abandoned gun position. The piles of ammunition 
and fuses strewn around were evidences of a hasty retire- 
ment. The emplacements with trail logs intact were im- 
mediately appropriated and the platforms placed. In 
short order the guns were in position to open up on the re- 
treating Bosche. Meanwhile the picket line and kitchen 
were being established below the hill. A fire was started 
and none too soon came the welcome call: "Chow's ready." 
And this time it was real chow — not corn willie or bully 
beef — but beans, rice and coffee. 

Meanwhile Jerry had started evening serenade — in 
rapid succession shells were dropping on the nearby road 
but not near enough to distract the hungry men. Sud- 
denly the whine of an approaching shell grew louder, and 
before one could duck, it exploded. Sudden pandemon- 
ium — the air was full of rice, beans and messkits — the 
diners lay on their faces in the mud. The cry "Anyone 
hurt" was followed from the picket line by "Medical 
man!" 

The Captain hastened to the picket line and discovered 
that our Chinese driver, Charlie Wing, was wounded. 

"Where are you hurt, Wing.f* " asked the Captain. 

"In the kitchen, " was the surprising answer. 

30£ 



THE RESPONSE 

By Sergeant Lynwood G. Downs 

It was outside Fontenoy. The battery was lined up 
along a hedge behind a low bank. The Germans had 
hastily vacated the position leaving two 77's behind, but 
they were now attempting a stand. Shells were dropping 
in unpleasant proximity and the cannoneers had been 
ordered to seek what little protection the bank offered. 
Altho there had been several narrow escapes, the battery 
had as yet not suffered, altho a six-inch had exacted a 
large toll from the doughboys who in unbroken stream 
were filing past. 

The phone rang and word came that artillery was needed 
to clean out several troublesome machine gun nests. The 
executive, Lt. Stribling, called to the section chiefs: "I 
want three volunteers from each gun crew to work the 
guns." Crouching low, the men ran to their posts and 
when the firing data arrived, not a single man was missing 
from his post. 



803 



A TRIP TO GERMANY 

By Corporal Harry Tucker 

When Regimental Hdq. moved forward from Verpel 
one morning Pvt. Pugh was ordered to take the motor- 
cycle to the next stop, which they told him would be St. 
Piermont. He started out at 10 a. m. and before he had 
gone one half a kilo he had had three punctures, which 
kept him busy for most of the day. He reached St. Piermont 
at dusk, and was informed by a truck driver that Reg, 
Hq. had moved to the next town. When he got to the 
next town an M. P. on a cross road told him they had not 
stopped and thinking they would surely stop at the next 
town, he continued for 3 kilo to a fork in the road with no 
sign boards. He took the right hand road and traveled 
about 6 kilo passing thru a little shell torn village. 
There was a field hospital here of the 82nd Div. where he 
stayed for the night and bummed supper from them. 
Next morning he refilled his gas & oil tank and asked for 
directions to the front, knowing that Headquarters 
would be farther front than a field hospital. He rode until 
9 A. M. over a poor road full of shell holes and finally got off 
his machine and decided to consider himself lost. The 
gunfire seemed pretty close on both sides of him. It was 
very desolate and hilly and he sat and waited about a half 
hour, when a driver with a gun limber came from ahead 
and told him he should have taken the left hand road at 
the forks and also showed him a short way to get back to 
the forks. He took this driver's word altho he had a funny 
feeling that maybe it wasn't right, and after going over a 
sort of wagon trail for 5 kilo he hit a good hard road and 

304 



APPENDIX 305 

kept on down it. The firing didn't seem any closer and 
he saw a lot of aeroplanes and after passing a small village 
with a big brick wall he came to 3 Germans at work with 
shovels filling in a shell hole in the road. They stopped 
work and looked up amazed at him, and he thought at 
first that they were prisoners, but he saw no provost guard 
or M. P. and thought that very funny. He went on 
about 400 meters and in making a big turn saw on the 
right hand side of the road a village and the main street 
and saw nothing but Germans and so many that he did 
not need further proof that he was in German territory. 
Some of the Germans had packs and rifles and seemed to 
be ready to move or leave the town. He turned the 
machine around and went back the road he had come down 
passing the three roadworkers who were still staring and 
talking together excitedly. As he passed with the ma- 
chine wide open they threw down their shovels and ran 
across the road and into the brush. He continued as 
fast as he could make the machine go tliru the next 
village and down the good road, but did not meet a soul 
until about 6 kilo from the place he had seen the Germans 
when he was stopped by infantry from the 42nd Division. 
He was so scared he could hardly talk and as shells were 
going over head high over he did not stay long and trav- 
eled along until he ran out of gas, he built a fire and waited 
2 hours for a truck which gave him gas and a loaf of bread. 
It was nearly dark so he stayed right there and didn't 
camouflage himself or machine as he was so scared he 
said he couldn't be more so. Next morning he ran into the 
304th ration dump and as they wouldn't feed him on 
account of divisional orders he got directions and found 
Reg. Hq. off to the right. 



OBSERVATION 
By Captain T. C. Thayer 

In order to learn the sector that our BattaHon was to 
be called upon to cover, I spent some time at the O. P« 
of the 1st Battalion of the 16th F. A. on the hill just North 
of Les Pres Farm during the day upon which the first two 
of our guns were to be put into position. As the work was 
entirely new to me I was directed to remain at the O. P. 
for the night so as to familiarize myself with the rocket 
signals for barrage, and the methods employed in locating 
the flashes of enemy guns. 

The O. P. had evidently been chosen when the enemy 
was still on the move back, following the American thrust 
at Chateau Thierry, for it did not offer sufficient cover, 
nor did it have an approach hidden from enemy view. 
With the stabilizing of the lines the Hun had begun to 
search the area for observation posts and had bcome con- 
vinced that the activity which he noticed along the line 
of low brush was associated with the gun flashes which 
were nightly visible over the crest of the hill behind. He 
had decided that it was well worth while to devote a little 
attention now and then to discourage the use of this loca- 
tion for the purpose of observation, and the observers 
were beginning to realize this. When meals or more 
interesting targets did not occupy him Fritz would drop a 
few in the vicinity, and with better adjustment as he be- 
came more practised the prospect was not inviting. 

From the series of little trenches, extending along at 
intervals for perhaps a hundred meters, constituting the 
Battery and Battalion O. P.'s it was possible to view the 

306 



APPENDIX 307 

terrain immediately to the front for a kilometer and a half. 
Then came an abrupt drop into the valley of the Vesle with 
nothing visible till the sharp rise of the far bank with 
scattering woods and a broad plateau reached back to 
Perles about due north and Blanzey to the northeast. 
Immediately down the slope was a mass of battered masonry 
— what had once been the town of Mount St. Martin. 

Some time after darkness had settled down for good the 
Hun began an intense artillery fire upon our infantry 
lines along the Vesle bottom. It was not long before our 
guns were replying in kind, apparently putting on a greater 
concentration and continuing some time after the Hun 
had reduced his rate. While our fire was still going on 
some gas shelling began on the woods which lay 100 meters 
to our left and ran down the hillside toward the valley. 
As the wind was carrying in our direction, we donned our 
masks. The town was next given a drenching, the fire 
continuing for some time at irregular intervals. 

The lieutenant on duty had been in communication 
with his Battalion Commander from time to time on the 
telephone reporting the appearance of rockets and the 
situation as indicated by the firing. We were suddenly 
aroused by the beam of a searchlight off to the northwest 
over in enemy territory. It was almost immediately 
followed by a terrific artillery fire sweeping the slope be- 
tween our post and Mount St. Martin and apparently 
drawing back on the town itself. Just after the initial 
outburst the phone buzzed, the major reporting that the 
Battery Commander whose guns were located just over 
the crest to our rear had seen a figure outlined against 
the sky and noticed the flash of a light as if a signal were 
being given the enemy. A hasty consultation followed 
and Lieutenant Davidson slipped out of the trench and 
was lost in the night. 

It was some five minutes later that a faint report 



308 APPENDIX 

sounded in the distance. Some noise in the fallen branches 
out in front of us attracted our attention at this moment. 
I challenged. A dark figure faltered up and between 
pauses for breath told me that he was an infantryman and 
that he and four or five comrades had fled from the artillery 
fire that had just engulfed the town. He had no idea 
where he was nor what had become of his comrades in the 
darkness. All that he did know was that his company 
had been relieved and on the way back from the lines had 
halted in the town for rest. All at once Hell-fire had been 
let loose beyond the town and had seemed to be every- 
where when they had tried to escape as it drew back on 
them. I dispatched him at once to the P.C. of the Battalion 
Commander to report the circumstances. 

It was some time before Lt. Davidson returned. He 
had seen flashes and the outline of a man. At his challenge 
the man had run. His shot had missed the mark. His 
search had developed nothing. 

As the hours dragged on toward dawn and we recalled 
the incidents of the night we came to very definite con- 
clusions. The enemy was aware that the relief was to 
take place and had laid down his fire in the valley while 
the relief was going on. Knowing that the withdrawal 
would in all probability be made through Mount St. 
Martin or the woods west of the town he had saturated 
the woods and the village with gas so that the progress 
would be held up. The flash signal from the hill immed- 
iately to our rear had announced the arrival of our troops 
in the town. The searchlight that had swept the sky 
had been a signal for the delivery of the death dealing fire. 

It was toward 5 :30 the following afternoon that I made 
my way from Les Pres Farm up the slope of the hill past 
the two batteries of 75 's which were set side by side on 
its bare face, only disguised by the flat green nets stretched 
over them. The hillside was pockmarked with shell 



APPENDIX 309 

holes. A telephone wire wrapped at frequent intervals 
with taping ran forward toward the woods, mute evidence 
of the work the linesmen were doing, and telling the story 
of the hail of splinters that the gunners endured to serve 
their pieces. 

Followed at some distance by Corporal Tucker with the 
telescope and Shackman who was to operate the tele- 
phone I moved across the open to the edge of the woods 
and worked east along the thin brush which ran out to 
the O. P. The Lieutenant who had been on duty did not 
waste any time in gathering up his instruments and turn- 
ing over the freedom of the little observing trench to us. 
Hardly had he left with his men when the slow twist of a 
"150" brought us to a crouching position in the shallow 
earthwork. There was a pause of perhaps thirty seconds 
and another had cleared us by a hundred meters. Cor- 
poral Tucker and I did not stand on ceremony but hud- 
dled together in the deeper end of the trench under over- 
head cover consisting of some light branches over which 
a shelter half was stretched. The next ten minutes was 
a succession of deafening crashes which rocked the ground 
and sent splinters humming overhead, each preceded by 
the sickening whine of the projectile, and a moment of 
awful suspense when our hearts sank and asked whether 
that was to be the last. 

At length a pause came and we began to breath more 
freely with the thought that he had finished the allot- 
ment for this time. A call to the adjoining trench assured 
us that no one had been hurt and we disentangled our- 
selves and straightened our muscles a bit. I gasped with 
dismay as I saw one of our linesmen spring out from the 
next trench to mend a break that the shelling had caused 
somewhere along the line. Warning was too late, and 
before he had cleared us by a minute the roar of another 
explosion rent the air. A second blast not fifteen seconds 



310 APPENDIX 

later told us that the show was on in earnest this time. 
The shells were now drawing closer and closer and clods 
of earth began to drop with a thud on the ground about 
us and to strike the frail cover over our heads. The 
air seemed to be momentarily compressed giving a sense of 
friction with the whirling of each shell as it passed. Closer 
and closer they came. At last one struck with a terrifying 
crash tearing away sections of the brush and sending a 
deluge of earth and splinters in all directions. A dash 
after the next one struck seemed the only hope. 

The buzz of the flying fragments was still in the air when 
we cleared the trench and started madly across the open. 
A flying leap found me in a shell hole as the whine and blast 
of another filled the air. Before I realized it, I was up and 
off again my only thought being to get to the flank. A 
dash of 100 feet and I landed in another crater huddled 
against the near edge with my helmet and a little entrench- 
ing shovel — goodness knows where I got it — protecting 
my head and neck. The regular whur and blast continued, 
now here now there and as the splinters hummed over me, 
I reflected in a cold sweat upon the probable error of the 
'150" howitzer, and experienced with bitter irony the 
practical demonstration of dispersion. 

After what seemed an interminable period the bombard- 
ment came to an end. For about five minutes I lay still 
lest a move precipitate another deluge. Not knowing 
what fate my comrades had met with I began to call and 
whistle in the hope of determining where they might be 
before I made a move. Getting no reply, I crept out and 
started cautiously back in the direction of the O. P. to 
find that my telephone operator was at his post and the 
line again in operation. The scant fringe of brush had 
been torn and uprooted all about; the ground was gouged 
up and everywhere were clods of sticky clay that clung to 
the shoes. Crawling through the tangle of fallen branches. 



APPENDIX 311 

I reached what had been my neighbor's trench. The 
telescope blown against the side had a hole where a splinter 
had cut through and carried away the glass. Blankets 
and coats which had been lying on the ground were cut 
into shreds as though an axe had been used on them. 

A terrible sense of depression seized me as I came to the 
edge of the trench. Death had claimed one of the number 
that had been with me but a few moments before. Per- 
haps Private Silber died thinking he had played but an 
empty role in the great struggle, yet it was his death that 
taught me the prime necessity of utmost caution when 
undertaking observation work and led me to an immediate 
decision to abandon the place. What the price might 
have been, had we continued to remain there, one can only 
conjecture. Certain it is, that the Hun shelled the place 
unmercifully long after we had left it. 

Dusk had now settled, and with the prospects of spend- 
ing the night amid surroundings so desolate, it was a relief 
to learn over the telephone that Corporal Tucker had 
escaped unharmed and would join me again in a short 
time. I began to bethink myself of where we might move 
to. It was perfectly evident that to attempt to maintain 
an O. P. in the immediate vicinity would be suicidal, but no 
move could be thought of while we must keep our watch 
for barrage signals during the night. As the hours wore 
on, the Hun began to deliver gas on the woods to our left 
and the air was filled with a pungent odor as of mouldly 
hay. It was two hours before we dared to remove our 
masks and breathe freely again. The only possibility 
for re-establishing ourselves, however, seemed to be in the 
front edge of this very block of woods. I directed the 
telephone detail to report before daybreak with wire 
prepared to lay a line to such a place as I could find there. 
Before leaving. Corporal Tucker and I re-arranged the 
branch camouflage and improvised a fake telescope and 



312 APPENDIX 

figure out of some white birch branches and the tattered 
blankets in the hope that Fritz would think the place still 
occupied. 

The thin mist of early morning was beginning to dissi- 
pate when we completed the transfer. A shallow dugout 
about five by seven feet located just inside the wood had 
been abandoned by one of the regiments that had been 
relieved and I decided to employ it. The roof offered pro- 
tection from splinters to be sure, but unfortunately the 
foot or so of earth was supported upon stringers not more 
than three or four inches through and could only be ex- 
pected to cave in with anything like a direct hit. A 
screen of brush about four feet in height immediately in 
front of the woods' edge and blending in with the surround- 
ing underbrush allowed the setting up of our telescope. 
As the observer must sit entirely exposed to fire it was a 
case of waiting for the first one to strike and trusting that 
it hit at a respectable distance. After it had struck you 
made your decision as to whether you had best retire to 
the dugout, or would try your luck with a few more. 

During our stay on the Vesle, this O. P. was in operation 
day and night 24 hours every day. Small details of men> 
when shelling did not prevent, were almost constantly 
at work in making the place as safe as could be done with 
the means at hand. Eventually observation was had 
from a wooden box, about the size of a telephone booth, 
which was sunk in the ground to a depth of about five 
feet and had a prow shaped front of | inch steel protruding 
perhaps eight or ten inches above the earth's surface. 
From the rear a narrow six foot trench ran back a ways, 
and, turning squarely, extended on to the dugout in which 
we slept. Under severe shelling we would leave the dugout 
and crouch in the bottom of the trench. 

Movement visible in German territority was almost nil. 
Now and then a man might be seen walking about, but 



APPENDIX 313 

seldom more than two were ever together. Our guns 
were registered almost daily on the dull grey walls of the 
once peaceful village of Perles, and fired on batteries of 
the enemy that we picked up under favoring conditions 
by their smoke. One day I was much interested by observ- 
ing half a dozen horse drawn ambulances that passed 
along the roads at intervals during the day. I learned 
with satisfaction that we had delivered a gas attack on the 
left. Had I at this time been initiated, as I later was, into 
some of the methods of waging war that the Him con- 
sidered legitimate, I would have called for fire upon these 
wagons. 

Barrage calls by rocket were frequently relayed back 
from the O.P. to the batteries by Very pistols, fired from 
behind our hill, a man running back through the woods to 
do it. This was some times our only means of reaching 
the guns quickly for wires were cut at all hours of the day 
and night. Projectors were also set up and used for this 
purpose. 

One of the most glorious exhibitions of the obliterating 
power of the artillery came on the afternoon preceding the 
night upon which the Hun withdrew to the Aisne. For 
two days previous we had picked up movements of troops 
on the heights across the Aisne, fully fifteen kilometers 
away, and had seen large numbers of horses grazing. 
Toward four o'clock our " 155's" opened up on the town 
of Perles and on the region to the east and west. With 
the burst of each shell a great cloud of dust would rise up 
and crawl along westward. At times, the town was lost 
completely in the blanket which extended for more than 
five hundred meters, and rose to a height of a couple of 
hundred. Zone fire over an area west of Blanzey drub- 
bed the ground like heavy rain drops. All at once a 
great burst of flame shooting skyward recorded a direct 
hit on an ammunition dump. It was not long before the 



314 APPENDIX 

fire was creeping along the ground and apparently licking 
up new stores as it went. At least two hours elapsed 
before the flames subsided and died away. We found 
later when we moved forward into this region that two 
Battery positions had been swept by the fire, their camou- 
flage burned away and a great deal of their ammunition 
destroyed. Over on our left, north of Bazoches another 
dump went up under a terrific downpour of the "how's." 

During the night, the Hun announced his retirement by 
fires started for the most part toward early morning. 
It was a strange and uncanny feeling to be able to move 
about with freedom and to view our infantry in a thin line 
working across the open the other side of the Vesle in the 
direction of Perles. Our barrage line was well forward 
and we adjusted with semi steel shell at a range of 8500 
meters. The following morning we picked up our in- 
struments and moved forward. It was really quite a blow 
to leave our little " Gibraltar^' for it had been our home for 
many a long hour and had protected us from a hail of 
wicked splinters. 

The Battalion P.C. was now located near a sand pit 
some distance down the valley from Blanzey and I was 
directed to go forward to reconnoitre a new O.P. which 
would cover the region between Oeuilly on the west 
and Cuisy farm on the east. My first effort did not give 
me the sweep required and Lieutenant Colonel Easterday 
— then our major — arriving on the scene with his Battery 
Commanders on reconnaissance of positions forward, 
started me off in the direction of Serval. 

Dusk was coming on when I reached the cross roads 
500 meters from the end of the valley in which the town 
lay. It would have been folly to go out on the bare hill 
that I expected to get observation from for the Hun was 
pounding the tar out of the town and the hill itself was 
receiving a full share. For some time we watched the 



APPENDIX 315 

powdered dust rise from the battered ruins. When the 
fire had slackened I sent Braun, my telephone man, back 
to start the laying of a wire to a point which I designated. 
Michel and I waited a while longer and then began our 
reconnaissance for a suitable place to establish ourselves. 
A couple of battery emplacements from which the enemy 
had retired were in the vicinity but offered no view of our 
sector. We extended our search over the entire face of 
the hill only to find it barren of possibilities. It had now 
become too dark to warrant a continuance of our efforts 
on unfamiliar ground with our own line only a short dis- 
tance away. We seated ourselves in a ditch at a road 
crossing and awaited the arrival of the wiremen. A 
musunderstanding resulted in our remaining here all night 
during which time the Hun tried out every form of gas he 
had in stock and put down a barrage that dropped splin- 
ters in the road near us. Expecting the detail to arrive 
at any time, we fought off sleep, though it required a tre- 
mendous effort. When it became light enough for me to 
make my way about I set out for the town on the chance 
that I might find some possibility there. Working along 
the brush that fringed the top of the valley, I reached a 
point from which I could see a house that was still in- 
tact and which stood out from the other buildings like 
a lighthouse on the nose of the hill. Exercising ex- 
treme caution, I dodged from cover to cover until I got 
within a stone's throw. Then I had to move directly 
across the open. A hasty examination of the interior 
developed the fact that we could get excellent observa- 
tion, that it had good walls and that it had a roof. As 
the rear door by which we must enter was opposite a 
window I hung some old clothing, found in the attic, 
over a wire in such a way as to break the light and prevent 
our being outlined against the sky as we passed in and out. 
This done, I began to look for some stairway leading down 



316 APPENDIX 

to a cellar. There was none, and with visibility now 
suflBciently good to permit the enemy to pick up any 
movements outside. I did not dare go out the front door 
and down the flight of steps to carry my investigation 
further. I wasted no time in retiring from the house and 
making my way back to the little shelter in which I had 
left Michel. 

Still in doubt as to why the wire had not come we separ- 
ated and plodded back to Blanzey by different routes so 
as to meet up with the detail if it were on the way. Ar- 
riving at the Battalion P. C. I found orders awaiting me. 
I was to establish an O. P. immediately and proceed to the 
registration of the guns. 

The thought of laying a wire out to Serval over the face 
of an open hill upon which the enemy had direct observa- 
tion was a bit flabbergasting. Furthermore, the fact that 
my observatory was on a point which projected into the 
enemy line and exposed to view from two sides due to the 
bow to the southeast that the line took, would simply 
mean that to carry a wire there in the day time would give 
the place away at the outset. "Orders is Orders" and in 
a couple of hours I was leading a procession from Blanzey 
that was telling out wire behind me. Lt. Hoar, just arrived 
with the regiment, and Corporal Rice who was to act as 
telephonist followed me at intervals. We took a course 
as direct as possible owing to the length of the run and 
upon reaching the valley we crouched and crawled along, 
keeping close to the cover afforded by the brush on the 
very edge of the precipitate side. Reaching a point pro- 
tected by a heavy growth of tree tops, we set aside our 
instruments and equipment and waited for the linesmen 
to come up with us. 

Kind circumstance had a surprise in store for me. The 
run proving longer than was anticipated, it was necessary 
to send back for more wire. The wire available had suf- 



APPENDIX 317 

fered under the service at the Vesle and required consider- 
able testing to locate leaks before it carried through. While 
we were lying there, the Hun began to shell the town below 
us and to deliver some scattered shots where he had picked 
up the movements of our linesmen. We were still a couple 
of hundred meters from the house which we could see from 
our location, but I did not propose to make the move across 
the open to it until the line was in operation as far as we 
had come. It was, to say the least, somewhat disquieting 
to have the Hun now register a battery of "105's" on a 
tree which stood a couple of hundred meters behind our 
observatory to be. As the rounds whined over we passed 
judgment as to whether they were going to be "shorts" 
or "overs." Some of the fragments sang over our heads 
and kept us on the anxious seat, but none was labeled for 
us as it turned out. 

At length the line was in operation and the decision must 
be made as to whether the parade to the house would be 
staged immediately or delayed till dusk, which was rapidly 
coming on. I decided upon the latter. 

The wire to complete the run proved insufficient, and 
Corporal Rice with Sergeant Hickey who had come up 
with rations, went out in the darkness to salvage some 
German wire. Lt. Hoar and I immediately began to 
search for some place to which we might retire in the event 
of shelling. Passing down the flight of steps from the 
front door to the ground level of the front of the house we 
found that the room under the main house was a cow barn . 
Feeling our way toward a dark passage in the far wall, we 
descended a flight of steps to another level. Here I lighted 
a match and examined our surroundings. The room we 
found ourselves in had evidently been employed by the 
Germans as a dugout for there was straw on the ground 
and a chair or two. A smaller room separated from the 
main one by a wall had some 20 or 30 unfused " 150's " and 



318 APPENDIX 

"155's" lying on the floor, but our attention was chiefly 
taken up with a shell that was lying in the centre of the 
main room. It was placed in a very suspicious position, 
was fused, and had an oblong brown box resting against its 
nose. 

The possibility of having the house blown up from the 
explosion of this device had no appeal for me and I knew 
that our work would be doubly taxing if we had this pos- 
sibility hanging over us. A few minutes later I was out- 
side holding the end of a wire that ran down the passage- 
way and around the nose of the shell. A moment of sus- 
pense, and I returned to find that I had succeeded in pull- 
ing the shell away from the brown box without causing it 
to detonate. I made two trips, throwing the box over 
the cliff and depositing the shell some distance up the 
street where it would do us no harm. We cut a hole 
through the floor the following morning and constructed 
a ladder which permitted our descending to the cellar with- 
out being observed. 

I will never understand how this house failed to be hit 
more than once during the next nine days for shells of all 
calibers struck all about us and splinters even cut through 
the roof. We slept, that is the two of us not on duty, 
within six feet of a window facing the direction of enemy 
fire, but they never got the grove. Rations came up at 
night, and water was carried from a water spout down in 
the town, that was regularly shelled as a likely place by the 
Hun. No one was permitted to approach or leave during 
daylight. One night a German dog with a bell on its 
collar could be heard running along in the street below us. 
It was possible to see our infantry outposts a few hundred 
meters way, though they were not aware of our presence. 

Perhaps, one of the most amusing experiences I ever had 
was my night and day with the Italian officer who came 
up to take over this O. P. My French consists of the 



APPENDIX 319 

salvaged variety that the average American soldier has to 
offer, and my efforts to convey information as to where to 
look for barrage signals and the points that we used to 
adjust fire on, convulsed him. Thanks to his ready wit 
and intelligence, most of my attempts ended successfully. 
I hated to turn over such a Hell-hole to anybody, for the 
morning of the day upon which he came up, it had been 
necessary to evacuate one of my men who had been 
wounded by a gas shell fragment, and this could not fail 
to result in the O. P. being spotted and destroyed if the 
Hun was wide awake. I fled from the place as if a fiend 
were following me, when the time had arrived for me to go. 

The towering oak that served as the O. P. at the outset 
of the Argonne Show September 26, was only necessary 
for a day. My next move was to the 307th Infantry which 
was cleaning up the Fontainaux Charmes above La Hara- 
zee and starting into the heavily wooded region in the area 
back of the German trench system. Observation of fire 
was practically impossible, and although I went forward 
to the infantry front line, and even beyond it, in an effort 
to obtain information that would enable us to fire more 
effectively, it proved almost useless. On one occasion 
when Lieuts. Bullen and Burden and I made up the party, 
we worked well out in advance of our own line in hopes 
of being able to observe the effectiveness of a rolling bar- 
rage which they were to follow up. Sniping fire from 
enemy machine guns stopped us and for a quarter of an 
hour during which time we had to work back across 
a twenty foot band of barbed wire and dodge across a wood 
road that he had covered with a machine gun, it was a toss 
up as to whether or not we wouldn't be picked off by our 
own people as they came up. 

Although I extended my search over all of the high 
ground in the vicinity and did manage to find a couple of 
places from which some view could be had, observation of 



320 APPENDIX 

fire in the Argonne Forest proved a failure. The first 
real sweep I obtained, was from a beech tree which was 
located on the summit of the hill north of the Moulin 
de Charlevaux near where Major Whittlesey's battalion 
had been cut off. Although this was out some two or three 
hundred meters beyond our outposts and offered an excel- 
lent target for snipers, Fritz either was not in the vicinity 
or else thought he would wait until I established myself. 
For 15 or 20 minutes, I looked off to the northwest to 
where the woods ended and I could see German guns along 
fences in open fields firing upon the French Division upon 
our left. Before I was able to get a wire laid to this point, 
our infantry was on the move again, and I was trudging 
along behind them. 

Our infantry was now roughly drawn up along a line 
before Grand Pre on the west and St. Juvin on the east. 
I was directed to go forward to Chevieres for the purpose 
of ascertaining the condition of the roads and bridges for 
the passage of artillery across the River Aire. In order 
to obtain a view of the crossing, it was necessary to work 
down toward the river in advance of our line, but as was 
so often the case, Fritz did not prevent an individual re- 
connaissance, though he probably would have shot up a 
squad of men if they had attempted to show themselves 
anywhere near there a few minutes later. 

The attack on Grand Pre, on the 15th of October, 1918, 
found me leading a string of 8 runners down across the 
open toward our infantry line which was dug in along the 
railroad embankment. Machine gun bullets striking in 
the grass around us brought us to the ground, and a burst 
of shell fire drove us back into the woods we had just 
emerged from. I later succeeded in reaching the embank- 
ment with two of my men, but it was only at dusk that a 
crossing of the river was effected and the companies began 
to feed over in single file. During the night, while the 



APPENDIX 321 

307th was engaged in house to house fighting in the town 
and we could hear machine gun fire rattUng intermit- 
tently, the officers of the 312th Infantry of the 78th Divi- 
sion arrived at the shelter by the railroad which was the 
first Battalion P. C. and preparations for relieving were 
begun. In the morning, I made my way across while 
the 312th was attacking and reported to their Major who 
had taken for his P. C. a cellar which had been similarly 
employed by one of the Company commanders of the 
307th, the night before. 

Owing to the rehef taking place before the 307th had 
been able to clean up the nose of high ground in the north- 
eastern section of the town, the Hun was able to snipe and 
harass from here most effectively. This, together with 
the splendid observation he had on the whole region from 
the heights to the north, made it possible for him to em- 
ploy his artillery to cover the river crossings and the flat- 
land of the broad valley so thoroughly that it was well nigh 
impossible for anyone to get across, much less evacuate the 
wounded. When I pulled out late the following afternoon, 
the town was receiving a terrific shelling from the north- 
east and I couldn't help recalling my departure from the 
house in Serval and experiencing much the same feeling of 
foreboding for the fine fellows I had just left. 

After ten days out of the line our guns took up positions 
near Cornay and I went forward to St. Juvin to reconnoiter 
a forward O. P. for the attack staged Nov. 1. The place 
was reeking with gas and the bridges thrown over the 
river were under heavy fire, particularly that which must 
be used for the passage of our guns. Our infantry had not 
yet relieved, and the 82nd Division which was in the line 
had a BattaHon P. C. in a building down the street running 
east from the church. The Major informed me that ob- 
servation could best be obtained from the church steeple 
but as I evinced no enthusiasm for the project he added 



322 APPENDIX 

that it was possible to see a bit from the trenches their 
line occupied some 200 meters from the church. Going 
out with a runner I found the men occupying an old Ger- 
man system, shallow and pretty mussy. It was getting 
hazy and as I couldn't get the view I wanted, I went out 
about a hundred meters beyond some loose wire that had 
been put out. Fortunately, the Hun was some distance 
away, could not see very distinctly, and his aim was a trifle 
short, so I made my way back to the town, and after in- 
vestigating the church decided it met my requirements. 

During the day of the attack, it was possible to see Hun 
activity to the southeast of Champigneulle, which our 
infantry was working on, but due to the fact that the 
exact location of our line was in doubt, fire was not per- 
mitted upon one nest that raked the bare slopes of the ap- 
proach and put a withering fire on our men when they 
attempted to advance. When the break came the follow- 
ing morning, there was a rapid forward movement to 
Thenorgues and the next day to the crest south of Oches. 
It was here for the first time that I noticed white flags fly- 
ing from the towns. Activity on the roads leading into 
Stonne, which stood on a crest 8 kilos to the north, and 
some smoke now and then from buildings led me to be- 
lieve that we were close on the enemy's tail, and I called 
for fire from the heavies. Fortunately, they had not yet 
pulled into position, due to the heavy going and the con- 
gestion on the roads, for, as I learned the next day from a 
French civilian, the white flags indicated the presence of 
civilians. 

Machine gun pits hastily dug in the face of the hill op- 
posite us, allowed of our "75s" executing some telling fire, 
and I took especial delight in directing the fire of one of 
our own machine guns upon some of the Bosches as they 
retired under the shelling. The fun was not all for me, 
however, for later on when I endeavored to adjust our fire 



APPENDIX 323 

on the Polka Farm lying out on the forward slope under a 
couple of low fir trees, Fritz got the range pretty well with 
a sniping "77" and spanked the ground just above me 
quite successfully with machine gun fire. 

Stonne was being shelled when I entered the town. It 
was a pathetic sight to see the wretched old men and 
women with the little barefoot children just evacuated by 
the Huns from around Sedan, all crowded together in the 
church in a frenzy of fear as they experienced for the first 
time the crashing horror of shell fire. By good fortune 
one of my men was of French descent and we succeeded in 
persuading the people to scatter through the buildings of 
the town in the hope of reducing the casualties. One 
direct hit on the church might have precipitated a terrible 
catastrophe. 

Raucourt welcomed us with open heart, and it was al- 
most impossible to persuade the people to take money for 
the heavy German black bread that they doled out to us 
with a layer of plum-colored apple butter. Only to keep 
as a souvenir of the arrival of the Americans could they be 
brought to the point of accepting it. 

Our guns went into position east of Haracourt and we 
set up a telescope on a commanding hill overlooking Re- 
milly and the far side of the Meuse, after an attempt to 
establish an O. P. in the church there had resulted in two 
hits. Something was in the air, for we didn't receive the 
usual orders to pick up targets and fire on them, but 
rather instructions were to record all information of this 
nature for future information if called for. When, at 
night, I heard the rumbling of heavy traffic on the roads 
across the River, but was told that we were not to fire upon 
it, I became an optimist myself, and joined in the specu- 
lations of the hour. 

As the hands of my watch crept on toward 11 a.m., that 
memorable morning of November 11th, I could not help 



324 APPENDIX 

but look back over the vista of the past months and marvel 
at the endm-ing loyalty to The Cause that had character- 
ized every man with whom I had come in contact. If it 
had not been for the pluck and spirit that thought nothing 
of the cost, so long as it was a job to be done, I doubt if 
lots of us would be here to-day, for there is nothing like 
knowing the other fellow is absolutely sure to deliver, to 
stiffen a bowing back. 

A word for the fellow who carries the rifle — though per- 
haps I was something of a doughboy myself. After sitting 
in on the going up through the Argonne Forest with its ma- 
chine gun nests and barbed wire placed with all the craft 
of the evil one himself, I am proud to take off my hat to the 
men who could "carry on" through all of it and then with 
a black night and rain to boot, had the drive to "carry 
through" and snatch Grand Pre from a very unwilling 
Hun. 

As for the fellows who rode the barking guns, — perhaps 
Fritz is the best man to apply to — ^for I only saw them as 
they went and didn't see them as they came. We'll let 
it go at that, for we of the artillery will stand on the re- 
cord of our infantry well realizing that there's nothing like 
the crackle of your own guns to put pep in the old carcass 
when the going's rough. 



"A MEMORABLE FORTY-EIGHT HOURS" 

By Private John R. Egerton 

The date of September 5th, 1918, and the name of St. 
Martin brings very vivid memories to my mind, for it 
was on that date and from the village of St. Martin that 
I saw the beginning of the first complete advance of 
the Seventy-Seventh Division on the so-called Fismes 
Front. 

Together with three other men, I had been stationed for 
three weeks in the village of St. Martin doing observation 
work for the First Battalion of the 305th Field Artillery. 
These weeks had been strenuous ones for us, as during that 
time the Germans seemed possessed with the idea that a 
portion of our army was located in this village, and so 
shelled it continuously. 

Had you walked through the deserted streets to the end 
of the village, and then through an entrance in a stone 
wall surrounding what had once been a well kept garden, 
you would have seen through the grey mists of the morn- 
ing, two figures huddled closely together in the farthest 
corner of the wall, one with his eyes peering anxiously over 
the top of the wall and the other standing by with his tele- 
phone in readiness. You might have thought that noth- 
ing could be seen by these men, but you would have been 
mistaken, for from this point our entire sector was under 
observation, and record of every flare and rocket was im- 
mediately transmitted by 'phone to headquarters some 
distance away. 

As day began to dawn these men, realizing their night's 
vigil was over, and finding, as was most always the case 

325 



326 APPENDIX 

in the early morning that visibiUty was poor because of the 
mist in the valley, rushed to the centre of the garden and 
rapidly descended a flight of stone steps which led to an 
old wine cellar. At this point I was somewhat rudely 
awakened (for we could sleep even with shells bursting 
around us) and hearing the familiar words, "Hurry up, 
men, we must have breakfast before the haze lifts in the 
valley and we can observe the enemy again," I arose, and 
prepared for our meal. 

Up came our floor, a much walked on board which, when 
placed on two chippendale chairs, formed our table. This 
was then covered with linen of newspaper quality, and a 
can filled with white phlox from the garden above us formed 
the center decoration. A brass candlestick at either end 
of the table furnished just enough light to enable us to 
eat and yet hide our bearded and unclean faces. An as- 
sortment of china of the mess kit variety completed the 
scene. This began our day. 

From that time on, it was a busy day. It seemed as if 
all Hell had been let loose, for the Huns were shelling not 
only St. Martin but every point around us, and we were 
not only getting the shells that were intended for us but 
also those that fell short of their targets. Our telephone 
line was broken by shells more than a dozen times that day, 
and we were forced to repair same both under fire and aero- 
plane observation. 

Our greatest troubles were always during the three or 
four hours after dusk, as it was at that time that our supply 
trains went down to the trenches, and our observation post, 
located as it was at the very intersection of the two most 
traveled roads, received the full benefit of the fire that a 
cross road always attracts. We had educated ourselves 
not to mind the six inch shells and so called "minnewe- 
fers," but the "Whizz bangs" were always a constant ter- 
ror to us, for hardly would we hear the report of the gun 



APPENDIX 327 

before the shell would be upon us, and many times we had 
miraculous escapes from their bursts. 

As night drew near on the 4th day of September, the 
shelling became more furious than ever, and we were 
forced many times to seek for the period of a few seconds 
a more substantial shelter than the crumbly rock wall be- 
hind which we usually stood. It was a remarkably clear 
night and we could see many miles of the battle front. Up 
until about nine o'clock we had been listening to the music 
of German shells, but not long after that time our batteries 
began to fire a seemingly continuous barrage. Towards 
midnight the enemy firing became less vigorous, and in fact 
almost ceased with the exception of a few long range guns. 
We began to observe flares here and there, and before long 
the sky was a vivid red. What did it mean? Were the 
Huns retreating and burning their supplies, or were our men 
touching Uncle Sam's matches to their ammunition 
dumps? Both things were true, but our batteries were 
the cause of the greater number of the flares, and we 
could not help from doing a little silent cheering at our 
posts. 

The firing continued for the greater part of the night 
but morning dawned upon a practically strange country, 
for the firing had ceased on both sides, with the exception 
of a few stray shots, and the silence was almost appalhng, 
coming as it did after the din of the night before. For the 
first time since we had been at the post, we viewed our out- 
look from the outside of the wall and marveled that we 
could stand there without attracting enemy fire. 

Before noon the fields were swarming with our troops 
of the reserve infantry, advancing to occupy the newly 
won territory. What a difference a few hours had made. 
Only the night before found men cautiously making their 
way through the grass to the trenches, each with a serious 
yet determined look on his face, while not twenty four 



S28 APPENDIX 

hours later more of their comrades were traversing the 
same route in a care free manner. 

We remained at our posts all day, but all we could ob- 
serve was line upon line of our men traveling onward. The 
roads were getting more and more congested, and at dusk 
as we stood at the gate we could see nothing but a con- 
tinued procession likened as it were to the Crusaders of 
old, all pressing forward each man with but one objective 
in view. 

That night in our little French wine cellar, where we had 
previously sat in the dark and listened to the bursting 
shells above us, we were visited by the Commanding OflS- 
cer of our regiment, and heard these words "I shall be at 
the Hotel de Fismes to-night" which, as he sent them over 
the telephone, reminded us at that time of Caesar's famous 
message "We came, we saw, we conquered!" 

Surely these forty-eight hours were memorable. 



THE ACCOMPANYING GUN 
By 1st Lt. John R. Mitchell 

I HAVE hunted sparrows and frogs with an air rifle 
when a youngster, and some larger game with a shot gun 
and rifle, but for an all-around sporting proposition to 
those interested I can recommend hunting Boche with a 
75 MM. gun. You can have all the thrills of an ordinary 
day's shooting. You get up very early in the morning. 
You find that your careful arrangements for breakfast 
have all miscarried. You tramp all day, sometimes getting 
a shot and sometimes not. It usually rains. All your su- 
perior officers, from the Generals down, cuss you out for 
being where you are, and for not being where you are not. 
I may say in passing that a General as a rule rarely notices 
a battery, but a pirate gun and its hapless commander are 
never overlooked. However, if you can arrange things so 
as not to arrive at any one point at the same moment as 
a Boche shell, it is a reasonably happy and healthy life. 

About eleven o'clock on the night of November 4th I 
was awakened from a beautiful dream, that I had never 
been a hero and joined the army, by the following conver- 
sation on the telephone: 

"Yes, we have Mitchell with us from 'E' Battery." 

"Yes, he is a 1st Lt." 

" I think he will do, anyway, he is the only thing we have 
in the way of a first lieutenant." 

"Just a moment until I get a pencil." 

"All ready, sir." 

"One gun, a kilometer of wire, 200 rounds of ammuni- 
tion, a G. S. cart," 

S29 



330 APPENDIX 

"Yes, sir." 

"Yes, sir." 

"Yes, sir." 

"To report to Col. Sheldon, 307th Infantry, at Oches, 
at 5:15 a.m., November 5th." 

"Very good, sir." 

That "very good" certainly did not apply to me, for I 
was very comfortable, thank you, just where I was, and 
at that moment my idea of a good time was not going out 
on a pirate gun expedition. So when Capt. Ravenel 
turned to me, with a smile that a man from the warm 
depths of a bedding roll always gives to another man who 
is to be routed out forthwith, and said, "I've a little job 
for you," I just naturally cussed the army and the Bosche. 

We were on the road at 3:00 a. m., and reported as per 
schedule. Upon arriving at Oches I was told to take up 
a position to fire on some machine guns on the northern 
outskirts of Oches. We hauled our guns up on top of a 
hill behind the town, and prepared to make things un- 
pleasant for Mr. Bosche. Unfortunately, the machine 
gunners departed with the night, and we duplicated the 
action of the Duke of York. 

Who had ten thousand men. 
He marched them up the hill 
And marched them down again. 

As the Bosche had very considerately blown up the only 
bridge out of Oches, I managed to get some food and rest 
for my men and horses. At 1:00 o'clock the bridge was 
finished and to our great satisfaction we were the first 
wheeled vehicles over and after the Bosche. By night we 
had caught up with our advanced infantry at Stonne. 

The next morning the infantry beat us out. When an 
infantryman gets up in the morning all he does is just 
that and he is ready to move. Horses, unlike the infantry 



APPENDIX 331 

have to be fed in accordance with G. O., A. E. F,, G. O., 
Hq. 77th Div., and G. O., 152d F. A. Brigade, which all 
takes time, and then harnessed and hitched. 

The next time I take out an accompanying gun I am 
going to apply for a tank, for the road between La Besace 
and Raucourt would have given an energetic tank a good 
morning's exercise. The Germans had blown holes in the 
road, completely destroying it, and making cross-country 
riding and driving a necessary accomplishment. 

The commander of the advanced battalion of the 307th 
Infantry, which I was supporting, was a most elusive 
person that morning. He had been reported to me to be 
in several different places at the same time, which, though 
that regiment was accomplishing the seemingly impossible, 
I was loathe to believe. To settle the matter I rode ahead, 
leaving my gun to follow. As I rode along the La Besace- 
Raucourt Road I met several parties returning, wounded, 
which indicated that I might do some work shortly. Im- 
mediately south of Flaba I met General Price, commanding 
the 154th Brigade, and Col. Sheldon, of the 307th In- 
fantry. Word had just come back that our advance was 
delayed by stubborn machine gun action from points 
southwest and southeast of Raucourt. 

In my precarious existence as a lieutenant I have had a 
variety of jobs, but never before had I been called upon to 
act as a Brigade Commander. True, my force consisted 
of but one gun, but for this one engagement I represented 
the artillery, and we had all the elements of a regular battle. 
The general simulated the action of the aforesaid machine 
guns by his questions of: "How long before you can 
fire?" "How long do you want to fire.?" "How much 
do you want to fire?" Three seconds is no proper time 
for much mental gymnastics, but I had to beat the next 
question. We were to open fire at 1 :45 p. m. on the point 
southwest of Raucourt for fifteen minutes, then shift for 



332 APPENDIX 

fifteen minutes to the second point, southeast of Raucourt. 
Immediately upon the lifting of our fire the infantry were 
to advance. 

All I had to do was to get back to my gun, put the gun 
in position and lay it, compute the data, find an O.P. 
where I could see and fire; and I had forty-five minutes to 
do it in. I don't remember exactly how we did it, but we 
did. It took a kilometer of wire and all my wind to 
establish that O.P. Capt. Pike, of the 305th F. A., then 
liaison officer with General Price, contributed very great 
physical, mental and moral support. Our range was three 
thousand meters, and therefore there was not a chance to 
see the target from near the gun. My "P — ^T" training 
failed me, for there never is a convenient steeple or "the 
flagpole on Division Hill" around when you want to use 
them. So on my way back to the gun, I prayed for a 
goniometer, the alpha and omega of modern artillery. We 
have all dreamed of some nice kind old gentleman, cas- 
ually presenting one with a million dollars or some other 
little thing like that, or of an inspecting officer saying 
something is good, but if that ever happens to me it will 
be nothing compared to my feelings when at the gun I 
found Lt. Hoar with a goniometer out on an advanced 
reconnaissance for the 305th P. A. To be strictly cor- 
rect, I saw that goniometer and rather vaguely took in 
the lieutenant. 

The miraculous continued, for our first shot dropped 
just about where we wanted it. From the O.P. we could 
not see the machine gunners, but we could see our infantry 
waiting under cover of the crest behind which the machine 
gunners were operating. With sweeping fire we walked 
across the area indicated by the co-ordinates furnished » 
and then decreased the range, to be sure of a bracket. 
At the end of fifteen minutes the fire was shifted to the 
second target, and the operation repeated. It was a great 



APPENDIX 333 

moment when our fire shifted and we could see our in- 
fantry go over the crest, apparently without resistance. 
That is a satisfaction an artilleryman rarely gets. 

As to the direct effect of the fire I have had reports 
varying from a direct hit to scaring the Bosche to death. 
My own opinion is that the Bosche decided he was in a 
rather unhealthy neighborhood and executed a typical 
German "successful operation," worthy of his high 
command. 

My gun was in position immediately behind one of the 
German mine craters on the road, and as he was shelling 
quite heavily on our right, and now that the party was 
over, I was tremendously interested in getting on and away 
from behind that crater, for I guessed the Boche would 
shell that part of the road as soon as he thought wheeled 
material would be on it in the hope of catching someone 
held up by the crater. As a matter of fact, I guessed 
correctly, as he did drop a few there before we left; for- 
tunately, however, with no more effect than to cut our 
telephone line and to cause us to do some prompt ducking. 

My total losses consisted of a pair of field glasses and a 
raincoat. These I had left forward of the gun position, 
and upon inquiring from some men near where I had been 
as to whether they had seen them, they replied, "No, but 
we have seen a General and a couple of Colonels hereabouts . ' ' 
I never quite determined whether that was an explana- 
tion, or merely a bit of information. 

About five o'clock that afternoon we rolled into Rau- 
court. There had been demonstrations when our in- 
fantry came in just before us, but when those liberated 
French civilians saw once more their beloved "Soixante- 
quinze" their joy knew no bounds, and we had a triumphal 
procession. We could not understand their French, but 
we had a very good idea of their intentions when we saw 
the plates of bread and jam they had for us. The men 



334 APPENDIX 

decided that this was the place to stay for life, but as the 
infantry had gone on our job was to go on, too. So, after 
ten minutes' rest, we moved on to Harraucourt, a rather 
unmilitary looking outfit, with jam inside and out, but sat- 
isfied with the world. At Harraucourt the bread and 
jam operation was repeated with the addition of other 
food and beds for men and horses. Our troubles were not 
yet over, for the G. S. cart was pressed into service as the 
only wheeled vehicle in the vicinity to haul a supply of 
captured German bread to our front-line infantry. This 
took most of the night. 

I shaved and washed that evening in somebody's kit- 
chen, surrounded by an admiring group of French civilians 
who would burst out on an average of once a minute with 
a rousing, "Vive la Americaine," whereupon I would have 
to suspend operations and return in my best American, 
"Vive la France." I have now the greatest sympathy 
for a trick bear or a film star. That night I slept in a 
Bosche colonel's bed. Altogether, it was a fair day's 
sport. 

The next day we went into position southeast of Harrau- 
court, but had no chance to fire as rather complicated 
orders came out which prevented our firing where a Bosche 
might be. As about the only alternative was to shoot up 
our own troops we lived as all good people should in peace 
and happiness until the armistice. 



GASSED CAVE AT LA PETITE LOGETTE NEAR 
BLANZY 

By Colonel Fred Charles Doyle 

On Sept. 8, 1918, the regimental command post went 
forward from Fismes after two days of incessant shelling 
and occupied a large cave recently deserted by Germans. 
The engineers and medical officers had worked diligently 
all day neutralizing the air of the cave and taking all 
possible steps to degas the cave. The cave was pro- 
nounced safe for occupancy about 4.00 p. m. Col. Doyle 
arrived about that time and inspected the cave. Things 
did not look any too well and evidence of possible German 
trickery existed. The cave was very massive and could 
hold possibly 1000 men in ranks. Outlying galleries 
of the cave were pronounced unsafe but ventilation and 
boarding up of some of the galleries offset this difficulty 
and apparently rendered the balance of the cave safe. 
About 9:30 p. m. Col. Doyle instituted a check of all his 
men (about 40) to ascertain if they were in safe, ungassed 
parts of the cave. This check turned out to be a remark- 
able safety precaution, as despite all warnings many men 
had wandered into gassed galleries and were even then 
gassed, some badly, others undetermined. Many of the 
men gassed were blissfully asleep. About 11:30 p.m. 
leaking gas from buried gas shells rendered the entire 
cave uninhabitable and all men were ordered out. This 
was a severe measure as no protection against bombing 
planes or shell fire existed. However, drastic action 
was imperative. About this time many men began to 
show the effects of the gas and were in great agony some 

335 



336 APPENDIX 

blinded. The entire medical staff (officers and men) had 
been gassed and were unable to give any assistance. 
Col. Doyle alone remained in the cave giving aid to a 
constant stream of gassed men. This aid consisted of his 
locating some potassium tablets left by the medical 
detachment and making up an akaline solution from 
the water in his canteen. Gauze from a first aid bandage 
dipped in the solution served as an eye dropper. Many 
men were in the greatest agony from their eyes. Many 
were blinded for the time, only a candle existed for light 
and no assistance whatsoever was at hand. Col. Doyle 
worked unaided over the cases until 4:30 a.m., at the time 
he knew he was being gassed as he had been continuously 
in the same place where some of his patients had been 
rendered blind. At 4:30 a.m. he felt he had endangered 
himself to a point where it was wise to get out, but not 
until a medical officer attached to the engineers had been 
requested and arrived. This officer gave the men, still 
streaming in, the same treatment but only for a few mo- 
ments. During the four hours one of the greatest problems 
consisted in getting men out of the cave at once after 
treatment. Many had to led in and led out. 

During the day Col. Doyle's long exposure developed 
and that night about 10:00 p.m. his condition was such as 
to deprive him of any ability to see although he con- 
tinued to personally stay by the telephone, receive several 
missions for fire and assigned such missions to his bat- 
talions. About midnight he realized that his effective- 
ness was practically terminated as he was in great pain, and 
calling for assistance he was led away for treatment and 
evacuation. 

The Germans in this case had buried gas shells and 
apparently using a corrosive acid the shell cases had been 
eaten through. I suppose somewhat about 7 :00 to 8 :00 p.m. 
the gas had then leaked out, worked through the covering 



APPENDIX 337 

over the buried gas shells and fouled the air of the cave. 
A very nasty vivid impression of this incident will remain 
for years in the minds of all. Some of the men have not 
recovered as yet. Col. Doyle plainly felt the effects for 
three months after. Capt. Mitchell and Lt. Klots had been 
in the cave but a short time, possibly 3 hours and prior 
to 11:00 P.M., yet they were gassed and evacuated to the 
hospital. 



THE DUD 

By Colonel Fred Charles Doyle 

On Aug. 22, after an all night engagement during which 
no one had slept. Col. F. C. Doyle went to his bunk 
about 8.00 A. M. for the purpose of laying down for ten 
or fifteen minutes. He however changed his mind and 
decided first to talk over some matters in general with 
the Infty Brigade Comdr. Within 5 minutes after quit- 
ting his quarters a 105 shell ripped through the wall, 
passed through his mattress and dropped on the floor 
of his room. It failed to explode. Lieuts Willis, Klots 
and Capt Fox were in an adjoining room through which 
the projectile had also passed. Had the projectile ex- 
ploded during its passage through this room all would 
undoubtedly have been killed. 



338 



THE DUD AGAIN 

By Some Ear- Witnesses of the Headquarters 
Company Orderly Room 

The following in a verbatim report submitted by 
Tailor Smith, Hq. Co., 305 F.A., of an incident at La 
Tuilerie. A shell passed through two rooms of the officers' 
quarters above Regimental Headquarters, landing in the 
second room — a dud. While a fair measure of success 
was attained in reproducing the pronunciation and ac- 
cent of the narrator it is with exceeding regret that it is 
impossible even to indicate the dramatic delivery with 
which the story was told. 

DE BIG EXCITEMENTS FON DE DET (DUD) 

In a nice mornink I don't rember it de day, before 
Duffy vent aveg, in a nice Mornink standink in the 
Kroinel's (Colonel's) room vaz located five officers; two 
rooms ind five officers. One mornink vaz hot German 
shellinks; ven de shellink landit all vaz in de house and all 
big excitements. Understand it, all big excitements, 'n 
I vas in a little house vere de Kroinel's officers' quarters 
leaves. Ven de big shellink started de Kroinel vent out 
fon dis house, ind he vent aveg 'n I don't know vere. 
After ten minutes ago, der comes arahn Capt. Whelpley, 
ven de big shellink fall near de house, 'n Pvt Smith vaz 
in de house, ven Capt. Whelpley come in in de house, 'n 
he grabbit his gez mesk 'n helmet; 'n Pvt. Smith vaz in 
de house ven he qvick he grabbit 'n run out 'n run out. 'N 

339 



340 APPENDIX 

de excitements ven he got out 'n grabbit it, he don't 
know vat to do; 'n I vas stock in de same house, in de big 
excitements. 

In de moments fon excitements it takes him about tree 
minutes ind he heard it a shelf vaz comink 'n hit de hill 
ind soon de shelf hit. De vile I vaz so excited I dug dahn, 
'n I gorrup a minute later 'n I start to run; I start to run 
'n I vaz tinkink, ind I run to de dughouse, 'n I run in de 
dughouse, 'n I come in; I come in de dughouse 'n I couldn't 
speak aus, 'n eferybody tells me: "vat is de matter," 'n 
I couldn't tell me vat is de matter. After I vaz run in 
de dughouse ind I could not nobody answer, as de whole 
Regimental Headquarters, dat's Capt. Gammell, all de 
cloiks 'n de rest of de oflBcers vot's dere, I couldn't remem- 
ber, dey run after me in de big excitements. Dey vaz take 
dahn de telephone in dis dughouse ind it vaz in dis dug- 
house; de telephone vaz standink for five minutes later. 
Dey couldn't get any answer from Pvt. Smith vat vaz 
happink for de big excitement, Pvt. Smith couldn't speak 
for de last ten minutes. 

Ten minutes, you know after de ten minutes, dere come 
Lt. Klots, Lt. Willis 'n Capt. Fox mit de big excitements 
vot's happink in dis sleepink quarters. Dat's de same 
room vere vas Kroinel located in dis two rooms, ind oder 
officers, ind vaz start to tell it how de shellink landet in 
dis room. You couldn't believe me; you know in de same 
moment vat's all vaz big excitement; (here the narrator 
carried away by his own dramatic delivery of "de big 
excitements," becomes rather involved), dere vaz very 
big excitements in de same moment; in de moment ven 
ve vaz excitement, I vaz you know like some of dem, 
could not believe it in anytink you know, ind a minute 
after ve vaz standink dere, 'n all odder officers, I mean 
it Lt. Klots came it dahn vit all suits covered like tree 
painters. Dey tell us how de shelf landit in de room. 



APPENDIX 341 

Veil ve standink few minutes ind vere listenink; ve 
standink in de room ind listen maybe come more firing 
arahnd here. 

Ve passed de time by ten minutes ind he is gettink quiet. 
Den de excitement vaz over dey vent out lookink on dis 
excitement, ind dis is vat vaz happink mit our excitements. 
Comink near de house, de door vaz opink ind laining up 
vaz bik 155 shelf s ind not esplozhit (exploded), Den, de 
whole Regimental Headquarters togedder in dey come 
togedder look on it, how de shelf vaz comink in de house. 
(Here follows description of course of shell) De shelf 
hits first de vail outside; den de shelf vas hittink in de 
first room vere vaz Lt. Willis shavink 'n Lt. Klots vaz 
shavink. 'N Capt. Fox vaz sleepink on his rolling bed on 
de grahnd ind de shelf vaz hittink, ind hit tru de vail 
near his facet, ind hit Kroinel's bed in de odder room, 
ind smashed de_bet, 'n turned arahnd de bet; ind de shelf 
hit in de end of de vail fon de bet; de shelf hit ind of de 
vail fon de bet ind jumped back; de shelf jumped back 
'n he landit in de grannd tree feet aveg fon de door 
(very dramatically) 'n Pvt Smith vaz standink by de 
door; dat's only tree feet, one yard American langvage; 
tree feet aveg vaz Pvt. Smith. You can immeasure how 
happink he vaz de sheK vaz not esplozhit. 

'N de same time Sgt. Gruber came up to see Capt. 
Whelpley, ind he started to tell vat a shelf landet in de 
room; in de same moment he couldn't believe it for big 
excitements; de von tink, he goes over vit me 'n dere 
vaz de bik long shelf vaz laining in dere in de room. In 
de big excitements fon de officers, dey vaz afrait to touch 
it; even to get five feet nearer, den dey order Lt. Willis 
take de shelf fon dis house. Sgt. Gruber take, how you 
say it, grabs dat's courage, 'n a vire 'n a pail, I meam to 
say he's not afrait, for it fealressle, you know fealressle, 
like he vaz not afrait you know; he take de vire ind hook 



342 APPENDIX 

it dahn in de shelf, in de bik Germish shelf, 'n he pull it out 
fon dis room. 'N dey make a bik whole 'n dey bury it him. 

Ven de Kroinel comes back he vas bik excitements, 
very bik excitements. You immeasure how he happink 
he vaz, he vaz not dere. Sure he vaz glat he didn't hit 
him. Capt Whelpley come back in an hour later, 'n 
dey tell him de whole story 'n he couldn't believe it till 
he's going see it. Ven de saw it, he believe it. Dis Kroinel 
ind dis Captain dey vaz not afrait, 'n de same day ven 
de sheK hit, dey vaz sleepink in de same house. For de 
last veek, till ve left dis place, dey vasn't afrait to leave 
in dis house in de same room in de same spot. 



PRAISE AND ADVICE 
By Paper Work 

Headquarters 154tli Inf. Brigade, 
American E. F., October 18th, 1918. 
From: Commanding General 154th Infantry Brigade. 
To: Commanding General 152nd Field ArtUlery Brigade. 

(Thru Division Commander) 
Subject : Use of Artillery during recent operations. 

1. I desire to express to you and through you to the officers 
of your command, my appreciation of the assistance which 
was rendered during the recent operations of this brigade by your 
artillery, particularly during the last few days, where there was 
possibility of observation and where artillery assistance was of 
the highest value. I may say in fact that had it not been for the 
effective and efficient support which was given to me by both the 
heavy and light artillery, placed at my disposition by the Divi- 
sion Commander, the taking of Grand Pre by the troops of my 
command, under the conditions as they existed, would have been 
an impossibility, and that the success of the operation was due 
in large measure to the effective artillery support. 

(signed) Evan M. Johnson, 
Brigadier General, N. A. 
Commanding Brigade * 

1st Ind. 
Hq. 305 F. A., American Ex. Forces, 23rd Oct. 1918.— 
To Organization Commanders. 

1. The foregoing letter is published to the command for the 
information of all concerned. 

2. Each officer must feel a sense of gratification to learn that 
the efforts of this command during the past operations have been 

343 



S44 APPENDIX 

successful and eflFective and will inspire all to further continued 
efforts and sacrifices with the same aims in view. 

3. It is directed that this letter be read to all members of 
this command. 

By order of Major Easterday: 

C. vonE. Mitchell 
Captain, 305 F. A., 
Acting Adjutant 

Headquarters, 305 F. A. N. A., 1st Bn. 
American Ex. Forces, 

July 29, 1918. 
MEMORANDUM: For Organization Commanders. 

The Regtl. Commander, after the past 3 weeks observation of 
the work of this regiment, desires to call the attention of all con- 
cerned to the point that the entire command, from the most 
newly arrived private, to include all officers, must realize the 
stern obligations imposed on all by our present calling. Initia- 
tive, that means grabbing any and all situations by the scruff 
of the neck and jamming it forcefully through to a quick and 
successful conclusion is the first duty of all; this means putting 
a punch into your work, and applies to enlisted men as well as 
officers. If officers, for any reason, are not present, and N. C. 
O.s understand the idea to be carried out, let us make it an artil- 
lery standard to get the work done, in all cases of emergency, 
and done quickly. 

All work of the gun crews must be done with life and perfect 
team work. The crews have had sufficient drill by now to make 
this possible. It is earnestly advised that every enlisted man 
think carefully of his particular work. Run over your work in 
your mind, when not at drDl, and fully master same. All can- 
noneers by now should know all the duties of other cannoneers. 
Slowness on part of gun crews is the greatest crime they can com- 
mit. It means the loss of lives by our infantry, and what is 
worse, the loss of standing of the artillery in the eyes of all, and 
loss of confidence to attack by the infantry. Officers will make a 
special propaganda of this issue with the men. 



APPENDIX 345 

The New York papers, in front page letters, are spreading 
broadcast to the country the pride taken by the City of New York 
in the 77 Division. The city is thrilled to the depths by the 
information that we are on the front line. The articles fairly 
glitter with comments of our highly trained condition. All 
papers exult in stating that the 77 Division has earned the dis- 
tinction of being the first N. A. Division to appear on the front. 
We have done this, because we were the most proficient and 
highly trained. This fact will go down in American History, 
and you cannot realize the pride our friends, relatives and fam- 
ilies must have in us to know that we, each one of us, earned our 
place of distinction by hard, patriotic work. 

It is now up to each member of this command to maintain this 
high standard. Let every one of us get the jump into om- work 
to such an extent as to give our families additional cause to be 
proud of us. They are proud of you, you will never know how 
pathetically proud. 

Every regiment on the battle front is striving to outdo others. 

Remember we are doing the same. 

F. C. Doyle, 

Col., 305 F. A. N. A. 



DOING SCOUT DUTY FOR THE ARTILLERY 

By Private Everts 

Around noon hour, a call came in from Headquarters 
for Battery E to send a scout as guard for an advanced 
gun position. It happened at Perles and I have the honor 
of being selected to pack my duds, stow away a day's ra- 
tions and report to the P. C. in fifteen minutes notice. 
When a pirate hammers away at your position, it's im- 
mediately decided upon to bring the bandit to a lamb like 
disposition. This particular "kiss thrower" was annoy- 
ing us when the time came for my departure for a night's 
sojourn to unknown parts. Being on familiar terms with 
the cook (mess was always attractive to me) I told him 
of my intentions to locate the siesta disturber and also to 
remain as a squatter for the battery's future rendezvous. 
He, la chef des armes, broiled me a steak, evidently decid- 
ing I was dead already. (I'll admit I thought I must have 
been in heaven as "cornwilly," predominated my digestive 
organs for weeks) . As a farewell gift, I was allowed a can 
of " gold fish " and a litter of beans, accompanied by a half- 
loaf of bread. I was soon on my way and by evening, 
located the claim and prepared to guard. The location 
selected was just beyond a slope and must have been an 
old French gun position. It had two dugouts with a 
trench leading between, scantily camouflaged and muddy. 
After striking a few matches, I saw a German helmet pro- 
truding through sort of a barricade that "made up" the 
dug out. To be sure, I fired two shots at the "intruder." 
Satisfying myself it was finis, I sheepishly advanced rather 
ashamed of my cowardice. But being a New Yorker you 



APPENDIX 347 

soon learn that "Safety First" is a pretty good motto to 
follow. On close inspection, I noticed one hole clear 
through the top of the "cranium protector" but to my 
disgust, blood trickled through the aperture. I was cer- 
tain I had little intention of sleeping in that particular dug- 
out so moved to what must have been some Hun generals'. 
All conveniences were to be had, such as straw for a bed, 
half empty cans of solidified alcohol, two chairs, and in the 
evening, rats for company " It's only for a night" I said, 
so prepared for a sleep. I believe I slept for an hour or 
so, but that was brought to an abrupt end by a shell falling 
uncomfortably close to my private residence. I said shell 
but can easily make that plural. At that moment I 
thought I was the whole American Army consolidated, as 
I swore enough for a regiment. Even that was cut short, 
by a shower of dirt thrown rudely in my direction by an in- 
sulting direct hit. Our artillery must have heard my mix- 
ture of prayers and slaughter of the English language be- 
cause a barrage began that continued for a good five hours. 
I smiled contentedly and continued to show my apprecia- 
tion to "Morpheus." When the daylight came, I awoke 
lazy and hungry (as usual) Partaking of beans and bread, 
is'nt very encouraging for one who has slept uneasily but 
eating is essential, regardless of the condition of your feel- 
ings. After saving half a can of "fruit" for dinner, I 
pulled in a hitch on my belt and prepared for the day. A 
half hour later found me in the infantry trenches with 
machine gunners. They had heard the pirate German 
gun but couldn't locate it. When I saw coffee coming 
down the narrow lane, I decided then and there, that if 
they could'nt find an enemy gun — neither could I. After 
a gulp of "Java" I felt better and went to my home to 
await my relief. When it became night again, I figured 
they had either forgotten me, or left me for " the army of 
occupation." I still had a can of salmon to take out my 



348 APPENDIX 

vengeance on but discovered on opening same it was an- 
cient and beyond eating. The next best thing to do was 
to impose upon my soldier brothers a kilo away. Arrived 
with greetings and after explaining my predicament, was 
rewarded wth a whole box of hard tack and a canteen of 
water. On my way back rejoicing, I was cut off from my 
"home" by a succession .of one-pounders coming in close 
proximity to my person. Lying flat in a shell hole with a 
foot of dirt higher than your head, is much more comfort- 
ing than being the same distance, above. Figuring, they — 
the Huns, had discontinued the barricading barrage, I 
"rabbited" to my hovel with enough prayers said and say- 
ing, to save my soul from hades twenty times over. The 
question of slumber was far away so I layed counting shell 
bursts until I finally "passed out of the picture of light." 
I received word next day to return, as our battery had 
decided to move to another front. Two days later the 
Italians, who took the same positions, were driven back. 
The dugout, forty eight hours ago my shelter, was now 
in the hands of the Bosche. And to think how fussy I am 
about having a German "P. G. " on my spinal column. 



RUSTLING SUPPLIES 
By Corporal Louis A. Cohen 

The greater part of the personnel of a Supply Company- 
being "mule skinners," this story will necessarily — if the 
real work of the company is to be described — ^have to cen- 
tre around mules, horses and wagons, not forgetting the 
men who handle them and who, in the army, are officially 
known and rank as "wagoners." As is probably known, 
the Supply Company escort wagon is the means of bringing 
rations and ammunition to the Batteries at the front. 
Since this is true, it can readily be appreciated that the 
escort wagon to the Supply Company is as important 
as the gun is to the Battery. 

Of what use is a gun unless you have the animals to pull 
it into position for you; on the same basis of what good is 
an escort wagon unless your animals stand up and help 
you.'' It follows, therefore, that you must be good to your 
mule if you want her to be good to you. Nearly all our 
"mule skinners" named their mules and the names ran 
from "Jennie" to the names of Queens. One man in 
particular named his mule after his intended wife; THEIR 
name was Nora Bayes. This particular mule had the 
distinction of driving the water cart. 

It is also interesting to note that one entire battery 
might be wiped out and yet the regiment would be able to 
hold its ground while, if the Supply Company was destroyed 
the entire regiment would cease functioning. 

The task of feeding and supplying an Artillery regiment 
is not an easy one, and as for the Commanding Officer of 
the Supply Company who is also the Regimental Supply 



350 APPENDIX 

OflScer he is responsible that the men and oflScers are fed, 
supplied with clothing and otherwise equipped. In a 
sense, he is father and mother to nearly 1,500 officers and 
men always worrying about the condition of the men's 
shoes, clothing and other equipment. So is he always 
concerned about the rations of the men, being on the alert 
to see that the components of the ration, are such as to 
give the men the necessary variety. Of course, this is the 
most difficult part of the Supply Officer's task since the 
army menu is so limited. If bacon happens to be issued 
one day the entire regiment wants to know why hash 
wasn't issued instead, and if hash should be in order the 
cry is "why can't we get bacon?" 

The Supply Company had its first casualties at Fismes. 
While at Chery, 2 men were killed and 3 were gassed. 
Wagoner Jackob Jackson was one of the men killed. About 
five minutes before he was hit he was cleaning his harness 
in front of his wagon. The Company Clerk who was pass- 
ing was stopped and shown a letter which Jackson had just 
received from his wife. The glad tidings that he was the 
father of a little boy was conveyed in the letter. Jackson 
asked the clerk to get him the additional allowance from 
the Government because of the birth of the child, adding 
"my wife says that things are very high in the States and 
she needs the money." The clerk promised to attend to it 
immediately and then jumped into Jackson's wagon to 
look for some candy that the K of C had distributed the 
day before. It wasn't a minute after that that the Hun 
commenced shelling again, the second one hitting and 
breaking within five feet of the wagon. On investigation 
it was found that Jackson was hit in the back of the head. 
He died on his way to the hospital. 

In the last months of the campaign, the rout of the Hun 
having been so complete, they were forced to retreat so 
fast that our Infantry and Artillery experienced difficulty 



APPENDIX 351 

in keeping up with them, the roads and bridges being 
destroyed after the enemy had vacated. We were hot 
on the trail always keeping within a few hours of the Bat- 
teries. 

In addition, the roads were almost impassable, the heavy 
traffic and the continued rain having helped to make matters 
worse. Not only were these conditions to be met with; 
at several places between Thenorgues and Raucourt the 
road was mined by the retreating enemy each explosion 
having torn up the road for about 25 yards and each ex- 
cavation being 40 feet deep. This, of course, prevented 
the movement of the long supply trains and even the guns. 
Troops on foot had only to walk around these holes but 
vehicles could not do this. The engineers were early 
on the job and built roads around the torn up places; to 
attempt to fill in the roads would require days of hard work, 
the holes being so large. These were not the only trou- 
bles of a Supply Company. We could only move at night. 
The mules were exhausted after the continuous advance 
and it was not unusual for 10 or 15 of us, with heavy packs 
on our backs, to help the mules out of a bad spot. Some 
of the men would get on the wheels while others would 
push from the rear. Of course the men were just as tired 
and exhausted as the mules but the difference was that 
American soldiers can understand why they must go on 
while the mules had not the intelligence to know. It does 
seem strange for the very same mules always knew when 
it was time for them to be fed, watered or groomed and if 
by chance they were not fed on time every men within a 
radius of miles knew what the trouble was. 

The composition of the personnel of the Supply Com- 
pany was quite varied. It ranged from cobblers to poets. 
It can truly be called a melting pot. The following was 
written by the company poet one afternoon while all traffic 
was held up for about an hour due to breaks in the road: 



352 APPENDIX 

The old Supply is lumbering, 
Along the muddy road; 

The Guns up there are slumbering. 
They want this heavy load. 

No glory in this hovering. 
In shell-torn vUIage streets, 

No glory in the covering. 
From hostile airship fleets. 

The boys up there are hungering. 
We must push on — that's all; 

There's no use in our buggering. 
We've got to heed their call. 

The drivers now are whispering, 
They urge and cuss the mules, 

The hubs are all ablistering. 
But who cares for the rules. 

This is no time for faltering, 
The boys must have their chow; 

Drive on, though all are sweltering, 
We must get there somehow. 

You may not call this soldiering, 
I know they have the stuff. 

Within no fear is smouldering. 
They all are brave but gruff. 

And when there is a reckoning. 
Back home where all is fair. 

From those who do the beckoning, 
I know they'll get their share. 



A GOOD DINNER SHOT TO H 

By Corporal Henry Goldberg 

Don't ask me the date, for when we were at the front, and 
we were seldom away from it, that was the last thing we 
thought of. I remember it was a Sunday and sometime 
in August. Sunday I am sure, for Mike, who was our 
cook, said, "Boys, a good Sunday dinner and no Corned 
Willy." 

The place where we were to have this feast, was near 
Chery Chartreuve, and anyone who was in that sector 
knew how Jerry would shell it, especially around meal 
times. But for the benefit of those who were not there, let 
me say that there was hardly a square yard of open coun- 
try that did not bear evidence of Hun artillery. 

Well, the rations had come up and Mike and his able 
assistants were busy preparing, what we thought, was to 
be a good meal. Not that our meals were bad, but after 
eating corned beef straight, camouflaged and otherwise for 
almost a week, I assure you that Roast Beef, Mashed 
Potatoes and Rice Pudding was a feast. They were pro- 
gressing wonderfully well, when about 5 p.m. Jerry started 
his customary shelling. One hit near the kitchen, which 
by the way was in a direct line of fire, which caused Mike 
and the K. P's to "Partee tout de suite." Not that I blame 
them the least bit for doing that, for the farther you were 
away from the shells, the better you felt. They were 
about to go back and get the meal ready for serving, when 
Zowie, along comes a Hun 150, crashes right through the 
wall in back of the stove, and spreads dinner, in fact our 
next two meals, all over the walls. 

353 



354 APPENDIX 

Our Major came running out of the P. C, which was in 
the same building, to see what had happened, and the 
first one he should meet was Mike. All Mike could say, 
was, "Major, they shoota de hell out of the kitch." 

That's all there is to it, except that it was Corned Willy 
again for supper and, well I guess you imagine what we 
wished the Hun. 



THE FIRST AND LAST SHOTS 

The First shot fired by the 305th Regiment, F. A., was, 

(1) July 11th 1918, 3:10 p. m. 

(2) Battery "A" 305th F. A. 

(3) One kilo, east of Neuf Maisons 

(4) Gun Crew: 
Sgt. Wallace 
Corp. Anselowicz 
Pvts. Elsnik 

Lundy 
Berg 
Christy 
Zuccola 

(5) Remarks: The gun was laid for registration on an angle of a 
German communicating trench. The first shot was lost. The 
change was then made from high explosive to shrapnel and the 
second round, with the same data, showed the burst about three 
mils ofiF the target. Not only was this the first shot of the Bri- 
gade, but it also was the first shot fired by any National Army 
Artillery in the war. 

The last shot fired by the 305th Regiment, F. A. was 

(1) November 10th, 1918 Sunday 4:10 p. m. 

(2) Battery "B " 305th F. A. 

(3) Harravcourt Dept. Ardennes 

Approximately 12 kilometers south of Sedan dept. of 
Ardennes; 4 kilometers north of Raucourt dept. of Ar- 
dennes and 27 kilometers north-west of Montmedy dept. 
of Meuse. 

Battery position on a high hill to the east of the town of 
Harauco\u"t at a distance of | Km. from the center of the 
town and the main road to Sedan. 
355 



356 APPENDIX 

Co-ordinates of the Battery position: 
X— 300,450 
Y— 317,300 

(4) Gun Crew: 

Sgt Geo. Foose, Chief of Section 
Acting Corp. Hunt, Gunner 
Pvts. Burgeron, No. 1 

J. Stavish, No. 2 

Tom Moore, No. 3 

E. A. Olsen, No. 4 

J. Brennen, No. 5 

(5) Remarks: Fire for registration. 

Target, Farm house to the north. 

Total number of rounds, 38. 

Last shell, cleaned by No. 5, Pvt. Brennen. 

fused by No. 4, Pvt. Olsen. 

fuse set by No. 3, Pvt. Moore. 

loaded by No. 2, Pvt. Stavish. 

fired by No. 1, Pvt. Burgeron. 



CHANGES OF STATION OF REGIMENTAL P. C. 

STATION ABBIVE LEFT 

PontanezenlBarracks May[6,il918 May^7,|1918 

Camp de Souge May 9, 1918 July 5, 1918 

Neuf Maisons July 8, 1918 Aug. 1, 1918 

Magnieres Aug. 2, 1918 Aug. 2, 1918 

BainvUle Aug. 3, 1918 Aug. 6, 1918 

Doue Aug. 7, 1918 Aug. 9, 1918 

Chezy-sur-Marne Aug. 10, 1918 Aug. 10, 1918 

Bois de Courpoil Aug. 11, 1918 Aug. 12, 1918 

Nesle Woods Aug. 13, 1918 Aug. 17, 1918 

La Tuilerie Aug. 17, 1918 Sept. 4, 1918 

Fismes Sept. 5, 1918 Sept. 6, 1918 

La Petite Logette Sept. 6, 1918 Sept. 15, 1918 

Bois Meuniere Sept. 16, 1918 Sept. 16, 1918 

Mareuil le Porte Sept. 17, 1918 Sept. 18, 1918 

Grauves Sept. 18, 1918 Sept. 19, 1918 

Ferme Notre Dame (Near Fibbes) Sept. 19, 1918 Sept. 20, 1918 

Cheppes Sept. 20, 1918 Sept. 21, 1918 

Bussy le Repos Sept. 22, 1918 Sept 22, 1918 

Chatriees Sept.' 23, 1918 Sept. 23, 1918 

Florent • Sept. 24, 1918 Sept. 25, 1918 

Fme. Ferdinand Sept. 25, 1918 Sept. 27, 1918 

La Harazee Sept. 27, 1918 Oct. 3, 1918 

Fme. Aux Charmes Oct. 3, 1918 Oct. 9, 1918 

N. Depot d'Machines Oct. 9, 1918 Oct. 10, 1918 

Bois de Lancon Oct. 10, 1918 Oct. 11, 1918 

Malassise Fme. Oct. 11, 1918 Oct. 17, 1918 

Lancon Oct. 17, 1918 Oct. 17, 1918 

La Chalade Oct. 18, 1918 Oct. 26, 1918 

Chatel Chehery Oct. 26, 1918 Oct. 28, 1918 

Cornay Oct. 28, 1918 Nov. 1, 1918 

Martincourt Fme. Nov. 1, 1918 Nov. 2, 1918 

357 



358 



APPENDIX 



STATION 

Champigneulle 

Haraucourt 

Fontenoy 

Oches 

La Berliere 

Stonne 

Haraucourt 

Woods North of Sommauthe 

Beaumont 

Verpel 

Autry 

Arc en Barrois 

Malicorne 

Pontanezen Barracks 



AKRIVE LEFT 

Nov. 2, 1918 Nov. 3, 1918 

Nov. 3, 1918 Nov. 4, 1918 

Nov. 4, 1918 Nov. 5, 1918 

Nov. 5, 1918 Nov. 5, 1918 

Nov. 5, 1918 Nov. 6, 1918 

Nov. 6, 1918 Nov. 7, 1918 

Nov. 7. 1918 Nov. 12, 1918 

Nov. 12, 1918 Nov. 14, 1918 

Nov. 14, 1918 Nov. 20, 1918 

Nov. 20, 1918 Dec. 1, 1918 

Dec. 1, 1918 Dec. 2, 1918 

Dec. 3, 1918 Feb. 9, 1919 

Feb. 11, 1919 Apr. 17, 1919 

Apr. 18, 1919 Apr. 20, 1919 



ROSTER OF THE OFFICERS OF THE 305 F. A. 



ARBANGED 
ACCORDING TO ASSIGNMENT TO THE REGIMENT 

Officers transferred before Regiment sailed overseas not included in this List 

DATE NAJUE BANK OBG. 

1917 

Aug. 26 DoTLE, Fbederick C. 

" 31 HoADLET, Sheldon E. 

" 31 Thayeb, Thoenton C. 

" 31 Thirkield, Gilbert H. 

" 31 Thibkield, Nobman 

Sept. 1 Brooks, George B. 

" 1 Delanoy, Douglas 

" 1 HOYT, Lydig 

" 1 Wanvig, Habby F. 

" 2 Bbassel, Thomas M. 

" 2 Brown, Lee D. 

" 2 BtTBDEN, Chester B. 

" 2 Camp, Charles W. 

" 2 Debet, James L. 

" 2 Gammell, Abthub A. 

" 2 Jones, Paul 



2 



Pike, H. Haevey, Jr. 
Starbuck, Frederick L. 
Church, Oliveb A. 
Litilefield, Robt p. 
Fenn, William H. M. 
Kane, William M. 
Klots, Allen T. 
Mitchell, Cobnelius vonE. 
Mitchell, John R. 
Montgomery, George P. 
NissLEY, Warren W. 
Storer, Robebt T. p. 
Whelpley, Medley G. B. 



5 Willis, Harold S, 

6 Beck, Frederick L. 



Col. 






iLt. 


Sup. Co. 


Killed in action, Oct. 
13, 1918 


Capt. 


B 




ILt. 


Hq. Co. 




ILt. 


Hq. Co. 




ILt. 


E 


Returned to U. S., 
Aug. 25, 1918 


Capt. 


C 




ILt. 


Hq. Co. 


Transf. G. H. Q., June 
6, 1918 


Major 


2nd Battalion 


1 Lt. 


A 




2Lt. 


Sup. Co. 


Transf. July 2, 1918 


ILt. 


F 


Wounded in action, 
Oct. 14, 1918 


2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 




Capt. 


F 




Maj. 


Adjt. 




ILt. 


C 


Transf. Aviation July 
23, 1918 


Capt. 


D 




Capt. 


Adj. 2nd Batt. 


I'Lt. 


Hq. Co. 




ILt. 


D 




ILt. 


D 




ILt. 


C 




ILt. 


Hq. Co. 




Capt. 


Pers. Adj. 




ILt. 


E 




1 Lt. 


B 




ILt. 


F 




Maj. 


E 




Capt. 


Hq. Co. 


Trans. Hosp. Dec. 21, 
1919. 


ILt. 


Hq. Co. 




2Lt. 


B 


Returned to U. S. 
Aug. 25, 1918 



359 



360 



APPENDIX 



DATE 
1917 


NAME 


bank 


OBG, 




Sept. 6 


Fox, Noel B. 


Capt. 


C 


Returned to U. S. Aug. 
25, 1918 


" 6 


Montague, Dantobth 


iLt. 


Hq. Co. 


Died of Disease, No- 


" 6 


Ravenel, Gaillabd F. 


Maj. 


B 


vember, 6, 1918 


" 6 


Sawin, Melvin E. 


2Lt. 


B 


Returned to U. S., 
Aug. 25, 1918 


" 6 


Shutt, George P. 


2Lt. 


D 


Returned to U. S. Aug. 
25, 1918 


" 6 


Stimson, Henry L. 


Lt. Col. 




Returned to U. S. 
July 31, 1918 


" 6 


Strykeb, Lloyd P. 


ILt. 


A 


Returned to U. S., 
July 25, 1918 


" 6 


Washburn, Watson 


ILt. 


E 


Transt.Hqrs4ArmyC. 
Aug. 1, 1918 


" 6 


Washington, Laurence 


2Lt. 


C 


Transferred to avia- 
tion, July 23, 1918 


" 7 


Savage, Edgar W. 


ILt. 


Sup. Co. 


Transf. 2. F. A. Bn. 


" 12 


Ckonin, Dennis J. 


ILt. 


M. C. Det. 


Am. Tr Nov. 16.1918 


" 12 


MooBE, Marshall A. 


ILt. 


M. C. Det. 




" 12 


Pabbauobe, James B. 


Capt. 


M. C. Det. 


Transf. Base Hosp. 24 
August 19, 1918 


" 19 


McKenna, Drew 


Maj. 


Sup. Co. 


Transf. G.L 77th Div. 


" 27 


Sheeidan, John J. 


ILt. 


Chaplain 


Jan. 14, 1919 


Oct. 8 


Nobth, Leon N, 


ILt. 


Vet. C. Det 


. Transf. 304 F. A. Sept. 
6, 1918 


" 14 


Johnson, Thomas J. 


Lt-Col. 


1 Batt. 


Tranf. Gen. Staff, July 


" 16 


Bbopht, Frederick H. 


Capt. 


D.C. 


10, 1918 


Nov. 12 


Hodenpyl, Geo. H. 


2Lt. 


C 


Tranf. to Aviation 


" 12 


McNaib, Kabl R. 


ILt. 


Hq. Co. 


July 23, 1918 


" 12 


Walsh, William A. 


2Lt. 


A 


Returned to U. S. Aug. 


" 22 


Wanzeb, H. Stanley 


2Lt. 


E 


25, 1918 


Dec. 10 


Strong, Ellsworth 0. 


2Lt. 


A 


Killed in action, Aug. 
25, 1918 


" 16 


Dodworth, Wilfbed K. 


iLt. 


C 


Returned to U. S. 
Aug. 25. 1918 


" 17 


Moore, Lloyd E. 


2Lt. 


M. C. Det. 


Transf. Mob. Vet. Hosp. 
C. Jan. 2, 1918 


" 17 


Pennoyer, Paul G. 


iLt. 


B 


Transf. Art. Inform. 
Service, July 4, 1918 


" 20 


Graham, Edwabd F. 


2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


Killed in action, Aug. 


" 27 


GuENEY, Albert R. 


Capt. 


Hq. Co. 


21, 1918 


1918 










Jan. 14 


Essex, John J. 


Capt. 


V. C. Det. 




Feb. 14 


Dana, Andebson 


Capt. 


A 




Mar. 22 


Reed. H. H. 


Capt. 


Hq. Co. 





APPENDIX 



361 



DATE NAME 

1918 

Mar. 24 Schblpebt, John W. 

Apr. 22 Robinson, Abthub A. 

July 1 Eastebdat, George W. 

" 10 Wemken, Chas. F. 

" 20 Pebbt, Charles F. 

Sept. 1 SwENSON, Hebbert J. 

" 8 Putnam, Geobge E, 

" 3 Stbibling, Jesse W 

" 6 Hoar, Stedman B. 

" 6 MACLEOD, Donald J. 

" 9 BULLEN, OSBON W. 

" 9 CoPELtN, Johnston 

" 9 DocKERT, Raymond E. 

" 9 Hattimeb, Leon H. 

" 9 HoLcoMB, Harold 



" 10 Camp, Rot H. 

" 10 Geisebt, Thaddeus R. 

" 10 Gbaham, Chables L. 

" 10 Habt, Edwabd W. 

" 10 Hill, Albebt B. 

" 10 McKee, Waldo E. 

" 10 NoBTON, Thomas M. 

" 10 Tatlob, Reuben T. 

" 10 Teichmoeller, John G. 

" 10 WiLHiTE, Phillip A. 

Oct. 10 Allmond, Angus R. 

" 10 Gluck, Abthub C. 

Nov. 7 Cleabwateb, John H. 

" 7 Mubrell, Archie 



UANH. 

iLt. 


UBO. 

M. C. Det. 


Transf.302A.Tr.Aug, 
19, 1918 


2Lt. 


Sup. Co. 


Killed by accident, 
Feb. 10, 1919 


Lt. Col. 






2Lt. 


F 


Returned to U. S. 


2Lt. 


B 


Aug. 25, 1918 


iLt. 


Hq. Co. 


Adm. S. O. S. Hosp. 


2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


Sept. 14, 1918 


2Lt. 


Sup. Co. 




2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


Transf. 15 F. A. No- 


2Lt. 


V. C. Det. 


vember 16, 1918 


2Lt. 


A 




2Lt. 


C 




2Lt. 


B 




2Lt. 


E 


Killed in action, No- 
vember 6, 1918 


2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 


Transf. 2 F. A. Br. 
Am. Tr., Nov. 16, 
1918 


2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 




2Lt. 


C 




2Lt. 


C 




2Lt. 


D 




2Lt. 


F 




2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 




2Lt. 


E 




2Lt. 


F 




2Lt. 


D 




2Lt. 


Hq. Co. 




2Lt, 


B 




2Lt. 


D 


Transf. to Aviation. 



2Lt. 



2Lt. 



Hqrs. 



Oct. 17. 1918 
Transf. 2 F. A. Br. Am. 

Tr., Nov. 16, 1918 
Transf. 2 F. A. Br. Am. 

Tr. Nov. 16, 1918 



" 10 


Abelow, Solomon 


2Lt. 


Sup. Co. 


" 10 


Hatdat, Horace 


2Lt. 




A 


" 10 


ZuNDBL, Edwin A. 


Maj. 


1 Batt. 


" 17 


DeBell, John Milton 


ILt. 


Sup 


.Co. 


" 19 


KiLBOUENE, Harold H. 


2Lt. 






1919 










Jan. 21 


Von Saltzeb, Philip W. 


ILt. 




F 


" 27 


VoLLMER, William A. 


ILt. 




C 


" 29 


Gillespie, George A. 


2Lt. 




A 


Feb. 11 


McNevin, Alfbed C. B. 


ILt. 




F 


" 19 


KlBKPATRICK, JeEE W. 


Capt. 


M. 


C. Det. 




o 








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